Abstract
Limited understanding of the mechanisms underlying self-renewal and differentiation of spermatogonial stem cells hampers our ability to develop new therapeutic and contraceptive approaches. Mouse models of spermatogonial stem cell development are key to developing new insights into the biology of both the normal and diseased testis. Advances in transgenic reporter mice have enabled the isolation, molecular characterization, and functional analysis of mouse Type A spermatogonia subpopulations from the normal testis, including populations enriched for spermatogonial stem cells. Application of these reporters both to the normal testis and to gene-deficient and over-expression models will promote a better understanding of the earliest steps of spermatogenesis, and the role of spermatogonial stem cells in germ cell tumor.
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Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank Dr. Barbara Pilas and Ben Montez from the R. J. Carver Biotechnology Center at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for their invaluable assistance with flow cytometry and comments on the manuscript. The authors are also grateful to the NIH for funding this work.
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Garcia, T., Hofmann, MC. (2012). Isolation of Undifferentiated and Early Differentiating Type A Spermatogonia from Pou5f1-GFP Reporter Mice. In: Chan, WY., Blomberg, L. (eds) Germline Development. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 825. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-61779-436-0_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-61779-436-0_3
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