Mammalian eyes have a limited ability to regenerate once neurons degenerate. This results in visual impairment that impacts the quality of life among adult populations as well as in young children leading to lifelong consequences. Various therapies are in development to restore vision, and these include gene therapy, stem cell therapy, in-vivo transdifferentiation, and transplantation of a patient's whole eye obtained from interspecies blastocyst complementation. This review discusses advances in the research as well as hurdles that need to be resolved to have a successful restoration of vision.

Intermuscular fat is essential for enhancing the flavor and texture of cultured meat. Mesenchymal stem cells derived from intermuscular adipose tissues are a source of intermuscular fat. Therefore, as a step towards developing a platform to derive intermuscular fat from mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) for insertion between myofibrils in cultured beef, an advanced protocol of intermuscular adipose tissue dissociation effective to the isolation of MSCs from intermuscular adipose tissues was developed in cattle. To accomplish this, physical steps were added to the enzymatic dissociation of intermuscular adipose tissues, and the MSCs were established from primary cells dissociated with physical step-free and step-added enzymatic dissociation protocols. The application of a physical step (intensive shaking up) at 5 minutes intervals during enzymatic dissociation resulted in the greatest number of primary cells derived from intermuscular adipose tissues, showed effective formation of colony forming units-fibroblasts (CFU-Fs) from the retrieved primary cells, and generated MSCs with no increase in doubling time. Thus, this protocol will contribute to the stable supply of good quality adipose-derived mesenchymal stem cells (ADMSCs) as a fat source for the production of marbled cultured beef.

Brassica oleracea var. italica (broccoli) is a type of cabbage that contains vitamins, minerals, and phytochemicals. Consequently, it is used as a potential nutraceutical source for improving human health by reducing oxidative stress and inflammatory responses. Here, the effects of broccoli sprout extract (BSE) on the inflammatory response were investigated through lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced inflammatory mouse models. First, we found that the BSE obviously reduce NO production in RAW 264.7 cells in response to LPS stimulation in in vitro study. Pretreatment with BSE administration improved sperm motility and testicular cell survivability in LPS-induced endotoxemic mice. Additionally, BSE treatment decreased the levels of the pro-inflammatory cytokines TNF-a, IL-1β, and IL-6, and COX-2 in testis of LPS-induced endotoxemic mice models. In conclusion, BSE could be a potential nutraceutical for preventing the excessive immune related infertility.

Chicken embryonic stem (ES) cells have great potential and provide a powerful tool to investigate embryonic development and to manipulate genetic modification in a genome. However, very limited studies are available on the functional characterization and robust expansion of chicken ES cells compared to other species. Here, we have developed a method to generate chicken embryonic stem cell-like cells under pluripotent culture conditions. The chicken embryonic stem cell-like cells were cultivated long-term over several passages of culture without loss of pluripotency in vitro and had the specific expression of key stem cell markers. Furthermore, they showed severe changes in morphology and a significant reduction in pluripotent genes after siRNA-mediated NANOG knockdown. Collectively, these results demonstrate the efficient generation of chicken embryonic stem cell-like cells from EGK stage X blastoderm-derived singularized cells and will facilitate their potential use for various purposes, such as biobanking genetic materials and understanding stemness in the fields of animal biotechnology.

This study has evaluated the genomic estimated breeding value (GEBV) of the commercial Hanwoo population using the genomic best linear unbiased prediction (GBLUP) method and genomic information. Furthermore, it analyzed the accuracy and realized accuracy of the GEBV. 1,740 heads of the Hanwoo population which were analyzed using a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) Chip has selected as the test population. For carcass weight (CWT), eye muscle area (EMA), back fat thickness (BFT), and marbling score (MS), the mean GEBVs estimated using the GBLUP method were 3.819, 0.740, -0.248, and 0.041, respectively and the accuracy of each trait was 0.743, 0.728, 0.737, and 0.765, respectively. The accuracy of the breeding value was affected by heritability. The accuracy was estimated to be low in EMA with low heritability and high in MS with high heritability. Realized accuracy values of 0.522, 0.404, 0.444, and 0.539 for CWT, EMA, BFT, and MS, respectively, showing the same pattern as the accuracy value. The results of this study suggest that the breeding value of each individual can be estimated with higher accuracy by estimating the GEBV using the genomic information of 18,499 reference populations. If this method is used and applied to individual selection in a commercial Hanwoo population, more precise and economical individual selection is possible. In addition, continuous verification of the GBLUP model and establishment of a reference population suitable for commercial Hanwoo populations in Korea will enable a more accurate evaluation of individuals.

In this study, an experiment was conducted in order to determine what cryopreservatives (CPVs) were more effective in supporting the motility and viability of sperm from experimental animals. The sperm of mice, rats, beagle dogs, and rabbits were frozen using different CPVs, including DMSO, TYB, and Sperm CryoProtec. The results from freezing the sperm of each laboratory animal in Sperm CryoProtec showed a high level of sperm motility and viability in sperm samples from mice, rats, and beagle dogs melted at the end of the first week. For rabbits, a high level of motility was observed in sperm thawed during the first week, whereas a high level of viability was observed in sperm thawed during the second week. The results of analysis of sperm motility and viability using different CPVs according to laboratory animals showed a significantly higher level of sperm motility (26.28%) and viability (36.20%) for mice in Sperm CryoProtec and the lowest levels of motility and viability were observed in DMSO (p < 0.05). Significantly higher levels of motility (27.94%) and viability (37.94%) were observed for rats in Sperm CryoProtec compared with TYB, which showed the lowest levels of motility and viability (p < 0.05). The study findings described above suggest that the selection of appropriate cryopreservatives is required for each experimental animal. This is because there are differences in the levels of sperm motility and viability of experimental animals depending on the CPVs that are typically used for freezing human sperm, including Sperm CryoProtec and TYB.