Sperm contain microRNAs (miRNAs), which may have roles in epigenetic control. Regarding phylogenetic relationships among various swine breeds, Yorkshire and Landrace, are considered phenotypically and genetically very similar, but distinctly different from Duroc. The objective of the present study was to compare abundance of boar sperm miRNAs in these three breeds. Overall, 252 prioritized miRN...

Sperm acrosomes contain hyaluronidase, the amount varying, respectively, from ram, rabbit, bull, human, boar, rat, and stallion sperm to rooster sperm that do not possess this enzyme. Hyaluronidase was partially purified from bull sperm acrosomal extracts by DEAE-cellulose chromatography. Bull sperm acrosomal hyaluronidase has an optimum pH of 3.75 and is not effected by freezing and thawing or...

The prediction of sperm fertilizing ability has great economic importance for breeding herds when artificial insemination is used. Classical methods of semen evaluation generally measure the sperm concentration, progressive motility, percentage of viable cells, and acrosome morphology. These assays are poor in predicting sperm fertility, because only the samples with markedly poor quality can b...

Lines 63-69: Lipopeptide concentrations causing hemolysis are not toxic in vivo. Juola, Kinnunen, Fog Nielsen & Wright (2013) have recently shown that Bacillus subtilis var natto strains isolated from the traditional Japanese breakfast health product Natto as well as extracts from Natto products was clearly hemolytic on sheep blood agar after 2 days and toxic in a boar sperm motility test. BACK...

The bilateral imaging approach known from confocal applications operating in the line mode was used to realize real-time two-photon imaging. It is shown that the sectioning inherent to two-photon imaging could be improved by the introduction of a confocal line aperture in the imaging path. Using a high-power, low-repetition-rate amplified Ti:sapphire system, various biological objects were visu...

The adverse effects of high environmental temperature exposure on animal reproductive functions have been concerned for many decades. However, the molecular basis of heat stress (HS)-induced decrease of sperm motility has not been entirely elucidated. We hypothesized that the deteriorate effects of HS may be mediated by damage of mitochondrial function and ATP synthesis. To test this hypothesis...

For the development of immunological contraception, attention is being concentrated on the possibility of using a sperm membrane antigen. Boar sperm membrane was extracted with triton-X 100 and fractionated by Sephadex G-150 column chromatography. The glycosylated and nonglycosylated portions of protein peaks from the gel filtration were obtained by fractionating on concanavalin A-Sepharose and...

Flow cytometric assays of viable boar sperm were developed to measure reactive oxygen species (ROS) formation (oxidization of hydroethidine to ethidium), membrane lipid peroxidation (oxidation of lipophilic probe C(11)-BODIPY(581/591)), and mitochondrial inner transmembrane potential (DeltaPsi(m); aggregation of mitochondrial probe JC-1) during hypothermic liquid storage and freeze-thawing of b...

There are advantages for use of frozen-thawed boar sperm (FTS) as a tool for preservation and transfer of valuable genetic material, despite its practical limitations. It was hypothesized that increasing the number of motile FTS and number of fixed-time artificial inseminations (AI) would improve pregnancy rate and litter size. Semen from six boars was frozen in 0.5mL straws at 500x10(6)cells/m...