Isolation of Undifferentiated Spermatogonia from Adult and Developing Mouse Testes

Abstract

In the mammalian testis, the mitotic complements of spermatogenic cells are spermatogonia, including spermatogonial stem cells (SSCs) which form the basis of life-long spermatogenesis and male fertility. Thus, investigating spermatogonia and subdivisions thereof is essential to increase our understanding of male germline development and infertility. This protocol describes the isolation of spermatogonia from both adult and developing [postnatal day 6 (P6)] mouse testes. Cell suspensions of the adult mouse testis from the Id4-Egfp transgenic mouse line are obtained through a two-step enzymatic digestion and are subjected to Percoll pre-enrichment before spermatogonia are isolated by selecting testis cells that are CD9^bright and ID4-EGFP+ through FACS. For P6 mice, the testis is digested using trypsin-DNase, and spermatogonia are isolated by FACS selection of ID4-EGFP+ testis cells. In both cases, nearly pure populations of undifferentiated spermatogonia are obtained that can be further subdivided using additional parameters (e.g., EGFP intensity, cell surface protein immunostaining), and recovered for use in various downstream applications, such as biochemical analyses (e.g., transcriptome/epigenome), functional analyses by SSC transplantation or propagation in vitro.

Keywords: Fluorescence-activated cell sorting; Isolation; Spermatogenesis; Spermatogonia.