EFFICIENCY COMPARISON OF MEDIA FOR THE EQUINE SPERM CAPACITATION THROUGH FLOW CYTOMETRY AND COMPUTER-ASSISTED SEMEN ANALYSIS SYSTEM

• Grant number: 10/01912-5
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: April 01, 2010
• End date: March 31, 2011
• Field of knowledge: Agronomical Sciences - Veterinary Medicine - Animal Reproduction
• Principal Investigator: André Furugen Cesar de Andrade
• Grantee: Thayná Pantoja Gardés
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Medicina Veterinária e Zootecnia (FMVZ). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The phenomenon of capacitation occurs naturaly when sperm reaches the female reproductive tract, which the composition is able to promote the beginning of the sequential events that makes the sperm ready to fertilize the oocyte. This process can be yielded in vitro from adequate medium, which are essential to the progress of the IVF technique in different species. It is speculated that the low results obtained using in vitro fertilization equine species are related to the inability of capacitation in sperm in laboratory. There are two media that have been used in higher frequencies to develop the equine sperm capacitation in laboratory, which are the medium developed for bovine sperm capacitation (ANDRADE et al., 2008) and the medium utilized in the murine sperm capacitation (MCPARTLIN et al., 2008). In this way, the present project has as target to compare through flow cytometry analysis and computer - assisted sperm analysis system (CASA), these two media described in literature for the equine sperm capacitation, in order to verify which of these is more efficient in promoting the capacitation and hyperactivation of equine sperm concomitantly the maintenance of integrity of plasma membrane and motility for a period of 5 hours of incubation.