It was the aim of the present study to test whey as protective protein for the sperm cell in the long-term boar semen preservation medium TRIXcell. Analyses of sperm cell motility using computer-assisted semen analysis (CASA) indicated that the whey protein Porex has a similar protective effect as bovine serum albumin (BSA) in maintaining viability of stored boar sperm. Boar sperm diluted in TR...

The cation channel of sperm (CatSper) comprises four transmembrane subunits specifically expressed in human, equine, murine and ovine spermatozoa, apparently implicated in capacitation, hyperactivation and acrosome exocytosis. Western blotting and immunocytochemistry showed hereby that CatSper subunits are also present in boar spermatozoa, primarily over the sperm neck, tail and cytoplasmic dro...

The present study evaluates the effect that various steps of a conventional cycle of cryopreservation have on the patterns of movement exhibited by boar spermatozoa. Sperm-rich ejaculate fractions collected from 24 mature fertile boars (1 ejaculate per boar) were cryopreserved following a standard freeze-thaw procedure with 0.5-mL plastic straws. Overall sperm motility and the individual kinema...

Acrosin activity and semen quality (sperm concentration, ejaculate volume and number of spermatozoa) were assessed from March 1997 to March 1998 in semen of Large White, Pietrain and Duroc x Pietrain boars. Semen quality varied with season, including high production of spermatozoa in autumn and winter and low production in summer. Semen quality also differed across breeds. Acrosin activity of b...

Bipolaris oryzae is a phytopathogenic fungus causing a brown spot disease in rice, and produces substance that strongly perturbs motility and membrane integrities of boar spermatozoa. The substance was isolated from the liquid culture of the fungal strain using extraction and a multi-step semi-preparative HPLC procedures. Based on the results of mass spectrometric and 2D NMR techniques, the bio...

Boar spermatozoa were prepared for intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) by two different treatments to facilitate sperm chromatin decondensation and improve fertilisation rates after ICSI in pigs: spermatozoa were either frozen and thawed without cryoprotectants, or treated with progesterone. Morphological changes of the sperm heads after the treatments were examined and then the activation ...

High-resolution two-dimensional polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis analyses have indicated that several major boar sperm plasma membrane polypeptides (PMPs) increased in concentration during maturation in the epididymis. To investigate this further, monoclonal antibodies (MAbs) to two of these PMPs/glycoproteins referenced as 4.85 and 5.0 and polyclonal antisera (PCA) raised against PMP 5.0 wer...

There are various advantages, such as the preservation of genetic resources, an improvement of the reproduction performance in summer, long-distance transportation of semen and the possibility of progeny test, in the cryopreservation technique of boar semen. However, cryopreserved boar spermatozoa have not been routinely available to swine artificial insemination (AI) due to the lower conceptio...

__________________________________________________________________________________ Abstract In this study the effect of dietary supplementation of vitamin E on libido, servicing capacity (SC), sperm quality and serum α-tocopherol of Large White boars was evaluated. Twenty four boars were divided into three groups of eight boars each. Groups were randomly allocated to treatment groups, i.e. 0, 4...