A pilot study of large-scale production of mutant pigs by ENU mutagenesis
- Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China
- Third Military Medical University, China
- Chinese PLA General Hospital, China
- Northeast Agricultural University of China, China
- Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, China
- College of Life Science, China
- Pearl Laboratory Animal Sci. & Tech. Co. Ltd, China
- Tsinghua University, China
Abstract
N-ethyl-N-nitrosourea (ENU) mutagenesis is a powerful tool to efficiently generate large scale of mutants and discover genes with novel functions at the whole-genome level in C. elegans, flies, zebrafish and mice, but has never been tried in large model animals. In the current study, we reported a successful systematic three-generation ENU mutagenesis screening in pigs with the establishment of Chinese Swine Mutagenesis Consortium. A total of 6,770 G1 and 6,800 G3 pigs were screened, 36 dominant and 91 recessive novel pig families with various phenotypes were established. The causative mutations in 10 mutant families were further mapped. As examples, the mutation of SOX10 (R109W) in pig causes inner ear malfunctions and mimics human Mondini dysplasia, and up-regulated expression of FBXO32 is associated with congenital splay legs. This study demonstrates the feasibility of artificial random mutagenesis in pigs and opens an avenue for generating a reservoir of mutants for agriculture production and biomedicine research.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
Ministry of Science and Technology of the People's Republic of China (National Basic Research Program of China)
- Jianguo Zhao
National Natural Science Foundation of China (National High Technology Research and Development Program of China)
- Jianguo Zhao
Chinese Academy of Sciences (Strategic Priority Research Program of CAS)
- Jianguo Zhao
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Ethics
Animal experimentation: This study was performed in strict accordance with the recommendations in the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals of the National Institutes of Health. All experiments involving animals were performed according to the protocols approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee of the Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China. All surgery was performed under sodium pentobarbital anesthesia, and every effort was made to minimize suffering.
Copyright
© 2017, Hai et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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A pilot study of large-scale production of mutant pigs by ENU mutagenesis
eLife 6:e26248.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.26248
Further reading
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- Developmental Biology
Numerous reports showed that the epididymis plays key roles in the acquisition of sperm fertilizing ability but its contribution to embryo development remains less understood. Female mice mated with males with simultaneous mutations in Crisp1 and Crisp3 genes exhibited normal in vivo fertilization but impaired embryo development. In this work, we found that this phenotype was not due to delayed fertilization, and it was observed in eggs fertilized by epididymal sperm either in vivo or in vitro. Of note, eggs fertilized in vitro by mutant sperm displayed impaired meiotic resumption unrelated to Ca2+ oscillations defects during egg activation, supporting potential sperm DNA defects. Interestingly, cauda but not caput epididymal mutant sperm exhibited increased DNA fragmentation, revealing that DNA integrity defects appear during epididymal transit. Moreover, exposing control sperm to mutant epididymal fluid or to Ca2+-supplemented control fluid significantly increased DNA fragmentation. This, together with the higher intracellular Ca2+ levels detected in mutant sperm, supports a dysregulation in Ca2+ homeostasis within the epididymis and sperm as the main factor responsible for embryo development failure. These findings highlight the contribution of the epididymis beyond fertilization and identify CRISP1 and CRISP3 as novel factors essential for sperm DNA integrity and early embryo development.
