ATTACHMENT OF PIG SPERMATOZOA TO POLYMERIC HYDROGELS

MORILLA, GRICELDA; LIAUDAT, ANA C.; BLOIS, DAMIAN; CAPELLA, VIRGINIA; FUNES, R.; RIVAROLA, CLAUDIA; BARBERO, CESAR; BOSCH, P.; RODRIGUEZ, N

Congreso; XXI Annual Scientific Meeting; 2017

Reproductive efficiency of pig farms is highly correlated with the fertility of males. Therefore, it is very important to develop techniquesfor spermatic separation with the purpose of selecting high quality cells for assisted reproduction techniques. In the last years, the use ofhydrogels in biology is receiving great attention due to their potential applications in medicine and biotechnology. The objective of thiswork was to develop new polymeric materials that can be used as a platform to select a subpopulation of spermatozoa with better fertilitycapacity. To this end, we synthetized polymeric hydrogels with different net charges (positive CAT, negative or neutral HMA). Weobserved interaction between spermatozoa and polymeric surfaces by light microscopy. Morphological aspects and motility of attachedsperm were recorded. The results indicate that pig spermatozoa attach mostly to neutral or positively charged hydrogels. Microscopicobservation showed that the attachment of the spermatic cells to hydrogels occurred mostly through the apical zone of the head. Attachedspermatozoa kept actively motile for several hours. These preliminary results indicate that hydrogels can be used to select pigspermatozoa with high motility for use in assisted reproduction techniques.