Establishment of an organ culture system to induce Sertoli cell differentiation from undifferentiated mouse gonads.

Organ culture systems are useful for elucidating the process of testicular differentiation from mammalian undifferentiated genetically male gonads, as they permit various experiments, including experiments involving the control of gene expression. However, without addition of testicular differentiation-related factors, it is difficult to induce the formation of testis cord from immature gonads by a time point earlier 12 tail somites (ts) that corresponding to 11.0 days post coitum (dpc).

Genetic differences between C57BL/6 substrains affect the process of testis differentiation in Y mice.

C57BL/6J-XY (B6J-XY) mice, which have the Y chromosome derived from Mus musculus poschiavinus on a B6J genetic background, form ovotestes or ovaries. Previously, we replaced the genetic background of B6J-XY mice with B6N and found that individuals with testes also appeared in addition to those with ovaries or ovotestes. To investigate the effect of the B6J genetic sequence on the testis differentiation, the genetic background of B6N-XY mice was replaced with B6J again.

Identification of reference genes for quantitative PCR analyses in developing mouse gonads.

Stable reference genes are important for gene expression analyses such as quantitative PCR. The stability of 15 candidate reference genes that can be used to developing mouse gonads was thoroughly verified using combinations of multiple algorithms. The expression of these genes fluctuated greatly depending on the analysis period and/or gender.