Interspecific ICSI for the Assessment of Sperm DNA Damage: Technology Report

SIMPLE SUMMARY: The long-term storage of biological material (sperm, oocytes, embryos, etc.) is essential not only for animal breeding programs, human ART, and basic biology, but also for rescuing endangered animal species and other technologies. Whilst sperm storage is almost perfected for some species (bovine, human, mouse), many problems remain in others. In our contribution, we present a simple approach that can be used for the rapid evaluation of DNA damage level in sperm nuclei after freezing. This approach can be useful especially in those cases when the amount of frozen biological material is limited and permits much higher flexibility when modifying chosen preservation approaches. ABSTRACT: Xenogenic mammalian sperm heads injected into mouse ovulated oocytes decondense and form pronuclei in which sperm DNA parameters can be evaluated. We suggest that this approach can be used for the assessment of sperm DNA damage level and the evaluation of how certain sperm treatments (freezing, lyophilization, etc.) influence the quality of spermatozoa.