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Japanese scientists have successfully bred a type of
salmon using surrogate parents of a different species, in a breakthrough that
could help preserve endangered creatures, the chief researcher said Tuesday. Researchers
froze the testes of the yamame salmon, a fish indigenous to Japan that lives
its entire life in rivers, before extracting primordial germ cells and
implanting them into otherwise sterile rainbow trout hatchlings. These
primordial cells, called spermatogonia, were used by the fish's growing body to
develop fully functional sperm in males and viable eggs in females, said Goro
Yoshizaki at Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology.
The eggs and sperm can be fused in vitro to produce a
healthy yamame salmon, he told AFP. "As far as these kinds of trout and
salmon are concerned, I can say this methodology is complete, and we can
recreate sperm and eggs, and individuals, of the original species any
time," Yoshizaki told AFP. "We have confirmed the technology can also
apply to tiger pufferfish as well," he said, referring to the popular --
but poisonous -- Japanese delicacy.
Yoshizaki and his team are already working on a project
aimed at preserving endangered fish species and would like to see if the same
process is also possible in amphibians. "I want to upgrade one class to
another so that this technology can be applied eventually to reptiles and
mammals," he said. "But the hurdle is still high because the sets of
genes are much more different between male and female mammals." The study
was published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of
the United States of America.
Source: Yahoo News
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