ENU-induced mutant allele of Dnah1, ferf1, causes abnormal sperm behavior and fertilization failure in mice.

Given attention to both contraception and treatment of infertility, there is a need to identify genes and sequence variants required for mammalian fertility. Recent unbiased mutagenesis strategies have expanded horizons of genetic control of reproduction. Here we show that male mice homozygous for the ethyl-nitroso-urea-induced ferf1 (fertilization failure 1) mutation are infertile, producing apparently normal sperm that does not fertilize oocytes in standard fertilization in vitro fertilization assays.

Delivery of Cas9 Protein into Mouse Zygotes through a Series of Electroporation Dramatically Increases the Efficiency of Model Creation.

Previously we established Zygote Electroporation of Nucleases (ZEN) technology as an efficient and high-throughput way to generate genetically modified mouse models. However, there were significant variations of the targeting efficiency among different genomic loci using our previously published protocol. In this study, we improved the ZEN technology by delivering Cas9 protein into mouse zygotes through a series of electroporation.