CUR - The Council on Undergraduate Research

Investigating Centriolar Biomarkers of Sperm in Bovine

Alexa Carr, Katerina Turner, Sushil Khanal, Tomer Avidor-Reiss, Biology, University of Toledo, 2801 Bancroft St, Toledo, OH, 43606

To meet the world’s current demand for meat and dairy products, artificial insemination has become the new mainstream way to breed cattle. With one individual bull potentially impregnating thousands of cows, it is important to use bulls with high fertility rates. Using  sub-fertile bulls increases the chance of delaying conception, leading to an extended birthing season, less calves sold, and increased numbers of female cows slaughtered resulting in decreased profits. The cause of reduced fertility in bulls is currently unknown, but we hypothesize that defects in the bull’s sperm centrioles is one probable cause. Sperm contain two centrioles responsible for organizing the cytoskeleton in embryos. Testing this hypothesis, we expect to find an abnormal quantity of centriolar proteins in the centrioles leads to poor sperm quality and lower fertility rates. Sperm from 30 bulls was acquired from Select Sires, an artificial insemination corporation, who also provided information on bovine fertility ranging from low fertility to high fertility rates. Immunofluorescence will be used to detect centriolar specific protein POC1B and axoneme specific protein Tubulin. The data will then be quantified using the Confocal Microscopy’s Photon Counting Mode. We expect to find that bulls with high fertility rates will produce high quality sperm, increasing the success of artificial insemination. The long-term goal of this project is to develop a diagnostic test for bovine sperm quality, which will predict artificial insemination rates. 

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