Blastomere Biopsy On Male Reproductive Function

Preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) refers to procedures that are performed on embryos prior to implantation, and is considered as a way to prenatal diagnosis. Its main advantage is that it avoids selective pregnancy termination as the method makes it highly liked that the baby will be free of the disease under consideration. Currently, the PGD technology has become used more and more wildly around the world, however, its safety has not been proved. The biopsy procedure involves two steps: the opening of the zona pellucida and the removal of the cell(s), which are the procedure more than the other Assisted Reproductive Technology, (ART). The operation of removing the blastomeres from the embryonic is important.In order to figure out whether PGD, especially the process of removing a blastomers from the developing embryo has any negative effects on the growth and development of offsprings, we cooperated with Zhou Qi group from State Key Laboratory of Reproductive Biology in Chinese Academy of Sciences and we successfully obtain mice generated by PGD and IVM (in vitro embryo culture) technology for long-term and systematic observation and assessment. This study focused on the long-term effects on the male reproductive system of the offspring generated by PGD and mice born from IVM were consider as control group.In this study, ICR male mice's reproductive functions were evaluated at adolescence (11W) and old age (86W) respectively. First, we compared the relative weight of testis and epididymis and the results showed that there's no significant difference between biopsy group and no-biopsy group mice at adolescent. The HE staining showed that all the testis of mice in both groups were normal. Then we carried out sperm count and observed the abnormality of sperm respectively. Though there's no significant difference in the sperm count between two groups, but the abnormality of sperm from mice of experimental group was higher rate than control mice, P <0.05. The analysis of the proportion of ploidy by flow cytometry revealed that the proportion of diploid of experimental group mice was higher than the control group and the others were normal. Finally, in situ detection of apoptosis showed that there's no difference of apoptotic cells between the two groups.All the indicators above were detected the aged ICR mice, and no differences were find out between the biopsy group and no-biopsy group. To exclude the difference from species, C57B6 mice were used for repeat. Similar to the ICR mice, all the indicators detected between the two groups showed no significant difference.In conclusion, the biopsy process of PGD didn't produce significant effects on the male offspring's reproductive function. Further studies should be carried out to observe the long-term effects on other systems produced by PGD to guide the clinical application of PGD.