Glutathione treatment of Japanese Black bull sperm prior to intracytoplasmic sperm injection promotes embryo development

Intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) was expected to enable more efficient use of sperm from sires with preferable genetic traits and result in a generation containing a larger number of offspring with superior genetic characteristics in livestock. However, the efficiency of the early development of embryos produced by ICSI is still far from satisfactory in cattle. The present study aimed to investigate the effects of the treatment of cryopreserved sperm with glutathione (GSH) on the early development of embryos produced by ICSI in Japanese Black cattle. Moreover, the disulfide bond state and mitochondrial function were investigated in the sperm treated with GSH to confirm the effectiveness of the abovementioned treatment. We also investigated the effect of 7% ethanol activation treatment on the developmental ability of ICSI embryos using GSH-treated sperm. There was no effect on the blastocyst rate from the activation treatment. When sperm-injected oocytes were cultured in vitro, the treatment with GSH significantly improved the early development of embryos. Specifically, the rates of embryos reaching the 4–8-cell stage and blastocyst stage were significantly higher in ICSI with GSH-treated sperm (71.4% and 31.0%, respectively) than that with the control sperm (36.6% and 7.0%, respectively). Moreover, the GSH-treated sperm treatment significantly decreased the number of disulfide bonds in the sperm head (as shown by monobromobimane staining) and enhanced the mitochondrial function in the sperm middle piece (as shown by Rhodamine 123 staining and the adenosine triphosphate-dependent bioluminescence assay). Based on these results, we suggest that the treatment of cryopreserved sperm with GSH might contribute to the improvement of ICSI techniques for the production of blastocysts in Japanese Black cattle.