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Asian Journal of Andrology (2012) 14, 335-337; doi:10.1038/aja.2011.119; published online 17 October 2011
Comparison of four methods to evaluate sperm DNA integrity between mouse caput and cauda epididymidis
Serafín Pérez-Cerezales, Alberto Miranda and Alfonso Gutiérrez-Adán
Department of Animal Reproduction, National Institute for Agricultural and Food Research and Technology, Madrid 28040, Spain
Correspondence: Dr S Pérez-Cerezales, (sperc@unileon.es)
Received 29 March 2011; Revised 12 May 2011; Accepted 2 June 2011
Advance online publication 17 October 2011
| Abstract |
It is well known that transit through the epididymis involves an increase in the compaction of sperm chromatin, which acquires fully condensed status at the caput epididymidis. The purpose of this study was to compare the terminal deoxyribonucleotidyl transferase-mediated dUTP nick end-labelling (TUNEL) assay, the comet assay, the sperm chromatin structure assay (SCSA) and the sperm chromatin dispersion (SCD) test by analysing spermatozoa from the caput and cauda epididymidis in order to demonstrate the ability of each technique to discriminate between different degrees of sperm maturity related to chromatin compaction and DNA fragmentation. Our results suggest that some populations of DNA-fragmented spermatozoa associated with immature sperm can only be identified using the comet assay and the SCSA but not with the SCD test or the TUNEL assay.
Keywords: DNA damage; mouse epididymis; sperm chromatin; sperm maturation; the comet assay; the sperm chromatin dispersion test; the sperm chromatin structure assay; TUNEL |
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