Abstract
The studies of molecular events that occur in single cell types within a tissue often require the disaggregation of the tissue into a single cell suspension, followed by isolation of distinct cell populations. The germinal epithelium of mammals is composed of several cell types, which divide mitotically, before entering meiosis. In this chapter, we describe the isolation of five mouse germ-cell fractions by centrifugal elutriation, and characterize them by their DNA content (flow cytometry), cell morphology (DAPI staining of nuclei, Giemsa staining of squashed cells) and deposition of stage-specific meiotic markers (SYCP3, H1t, SAM68) on chromosome spreads and whole cells. Within 2 h it is possible to obtain enriched populations of elongated spermatids (up to ∼50% of the fraction), round spermatids (up to ∼80%), primary spermatocytes (up to ∼89%), and secondary spermatocytes (up to ∼17%). Furthermore, most of the collected spermatocytes of the primary spermatocyte fraction are in early-mid pachytene stage as judged by chromosome spreads, enriched up to ∼89%. Elutriation and techniques used for characterization of germ cell fractions are described.
Key words
- Centrifugal elutriation
- sedimentation velocity
- germ cell purification
- meiosis
- mouse
- germ cells
- SYCP3
- H1t
- SAM68
- testis
- spermatogenesis
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Acknowledgments
We thank Prof. Claudio Sette and Dr. Monica Di Giacomo for critical reading of the manuscript. This work was supported by the grant “Rientro dei cervelli 2005” from the Italian education council (MIUR) to M.B., and by “My First AIRC Grant” (MFAG) 2007, from Associazione Italiana Ricerca sul Cancro (AIRC) to M.B.
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Barchi, M., Geremia, R., Magliozzi, R., Bianchi, E. (2009). Isolation and Analyses of Enriched Populations of Male Mouse Germ Cells by Sedimentation Velocity: The Centrifugal Elutriation. In: Keeney, S. (eds) Meiosis. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 558. Humana Press, Totowa, NJ. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-60761-103-5_18
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-60761-103-5_18
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