Sex determination of cattle (Bos taurus) embryos following in vitro fertilization using semen sexing kit
Loading...
Date
2019
Authors
Chennym Dhanryll M. Guzman
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
It has been claimed that frozen-thawed bovine semen treated with commercially produced kits, Heiferfocus TM (in favor of female gender) and Bullfocus TM (in favor of male gender), increases the birth chance of bovine with desired sex by at least 20-25%. Therefore, this study was conducted to investigate on the efficacy of the semen sexing kits. HeiferfocusTM and BullfocusTM, through sex determination by Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR). two sets of PCR primers were used to determine the sex. Y-chromosome specific primer (BRY1), and bovine specific satellite sequence primer (SAT1). results howed that unsexed-sorted sperms tend to have greater fertility rate (58.06%) than those treated with semen sex-sorting kits (HeiferfocusTM with 50.87% and BullfocusTM with 48.21%). In sex determination, the sex determined by BRY1 in blood DNA samples showed a hundred percent agreement with the animals' anatomical sex. On the other hand, bovine autosomal sequences were amplified in all embryo samples using SAT1. The findings revealed that HeiferfocusTM has female sex ratio of 86.20%, while BullfocusTM has male sex ratio of 33.33%. The present results suggest that treatment of semen with HeiferfocusTM, but not with BullfocusTM, numerically increases the desired sex, ratio at the rates reported by the manufacturer (20.25%).