The present study identified the favorable conditions for isolation, enrichment and in vitro culture of highly purified, undifferentiated pig spermatogonial stem cell (SSC) lines that proliferate for long periods of time in culture. The colonies displayed morphology similar to miceSSC and were positive for markers of SSC (PGP9.5), proliferating germ cell (PigVASA), pre-meiotic germ cell (DAZL) ...

Hyperactivity of mTORC1, a key mediator of cell growth, leads to stem cell depletion, although the underlying mechanisms are poorly defined. Using spermatogonial progenitor cells (SPCs) as a model system, we show that mTORC1 impairs stem cell maintenance by a negative feedback from mTORC1 to receptors required to transduce niche-derived signals. We find that SPCs lacking Plzf, a transcription f...

BACKGROUND The spermatogonial stem cell (SSC) pool in the testes of non-human primates is poorly defined. METHODS To begin characterizing SSCs in rhesus macaque testes, we employed fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS), a xenotransplant bioassay and immunohistochemical methods and correlated our findings with classical descriptions of germ cell nuclear morphology (i.e. A(dark) and A(pale...

The in vitro derivation and propagation of spermatogonial stem cells (SSCs) from pluripotent stem cells (PSCs) is a key goal in reproductive science. We show here that when aggregated with embryonic testicular somatic cells (reconstituted testes), primordial germ cell-like cells (PGCLCs) induced from mouse embryonic stem cells differentiate into spermatogonia-like cells in vitro and are expanda...

Eighteen variants recovered from specific locus mutation rate experiments involving the mutagen chlorambucil were subjected to several genetic and molecular analyses. Most mutations were found to be homozygous lethal. Because lethality is often presumptive evidence for multilocus-deletion events, 10 mutations were analyzed by Southern blot analysis with probes at, or closely linked to, several ...

BACKGROUND The development of a spermatogonial transplantation technique has provided new possibilities for the treatment of male infertility. Previous studies have shown that spermatogonial stem cells could reinitiate spermatogenesis after cryopreservation and reintroduction into the seminiferous tubules of infertile recipient males, and this raised the possibility of banking frozen stem cells...

Stem cell progeny often undergo transit amplifying divisions before differentiation. In Drosophila, a spermatogonial precursor divides four times within an enclosure formed by two somatic-origin cyst cells, before differentiating into spermatocytes. Although germline and cyst cell-intrinsic factors are known to regulate these divisions, the mechanistic details are unclear. Here, we show that lo...

Long non coding RNAs (lncRNAs) have emerged as important regulators of various biological processes. LncRNAs also behave as response elements or targets of signaling pathway(s) mediating cellular function. Wnt signaling is important in regulating mammalian spermatogenesis. Mrhl RNA negatively regulates canonical Wnt pathway and gets down regulated upon Wnt signaling activation in mouse spermato...