Reproduction Abstracts

Introduction: Billions of sperm are deposited in female tract during porcine insemination but only a few thousands are able to reach the oviduct to facilitate fertilization. It has been reported that some of the sperm membrane proteins involved in fertilization are secreted by epididymis (i.e. SPAM-1, CRISP, and MFGE8). It was observed that the mouse oviduct is able to secrete some of these proteins. Some of them are implicated in fertilization since sperm fertility of KO mice (CRISP) is rescued during the IVF. The aim of this study was to analyze the expression of MFGE8 in porcine oviduct and uterus.

Material and methods: RNA was isolated from the ampullary region of the porcine oviduct (n=7) and uterus (n=3). cDNA was synthesized with oligo-dT as primer and was used as template for PCR amplifications using primers based on GenBank sequence of MFGE8 in Sus scrofa (NM_001076439).

Results and discussion: PCR amplifications resulted in the obtention of one amplicon in oviduct (145 bp) and other one in uterus (252 bp) corresponding to the MFGE8 transcript as corroborated by automatic sequencing.This study demonstrates for the first time the existence of mRNA codifying for MFGE8 in porcine oviduct and confirms its presence in the uterus. Future studies are necessary to investigate the implication of this protein in the sperm maturation in the female genital tract and its contribution to the sperm–ZP interaction in the oviductal environment. This work was supported from the MINECO (AGL2012-40180-C03-02), FEDER/ERDF, and Fundación Séneca (04542/GERM/06).