Establishing female germline stem cell from pig adult ovaries and research on differentiation to oocyte

Abstract

One of the most recently important findings in the field of stem cell research is the existence of female germ line stem cells – FGSCs. The study of FGSCs will open a new direction not only to support female’s fertility treatment and understand female’s menopause, but also have the ability to create transgenic animals from FGSC. Firstly, we established in vitro growth culture system from small Pig oocytes for research on differentiation to oocytes. Secondly, we conducted this study to establish and improve the isolation and cultivation method of porcine female germline stem cells (pFGSCs) isolated from porcine adult ovaries. After isolation and cultivation of pFGSCs, they increased in number and size, formed clusters of cells with circular shapes without the loss of proliferative after multiple passing cells. The result of Immunofluorescent with specific germ stem cell and oocyte marker showed that after a certain time of isolation and culture of pFGSCs, although only the pPGSCs can differentiate to OLCs was very low (~0.1%); they still retained the characteristics of germ cell and stem cells. Our results demonstrate that in the porcine adult ovary still contain a number of pFGSCs, under appropriate conditions of laboratory culture, they can be isolated, proliferated and differentiated to OLCs (40-50um). Keywords— Female germline stem cell, oocytes, proliferation