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Selective breeding and artificial insemination are the cornerstone methods for generating agricultural animals with desired traits. But a technique called surrogate sire technology—in which males are first sterilized and then transplanted with stem cells to produce sperm from genetically desirable donors—may soon join the list, thanks to proof-of-concept experiments published in PNAS on Monday (September 14).
“This is a really great paper that shows for the first time that you can do spermatogonial stem cell transplantation in a variety of large animals,” says reproductive biologist Thomas Spencer of the University of Missouri who was not involved in the research.
They applied the technique “to not only one but three agricultural species . . . boars, bucks, and bulls,” adds Thomas Hansen, a reproduction researcher at Colorado State University, who also did not participate in the study. “It’s a tremendous amount of work.”
Humans have been controlling ...
