Meet the first litter of dogs born through IVF – Univision

It was a historic moment for science … but also endearing. A group of researchers has managed to be born the first litter of puppies by IVF.

The team in charge of the process crowded around and saw a dog giving birth to seven puppies .

“ Each of us took a puppy and rubbed with a towel and when the puppy began to stir and moan, we knew it was good,” Dr. Alexander Travis, who runs the laboratory at the Baker Institute for Animal Health at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.

“They had their eyes closed. looked lovely, with the faces crushed . The examined to make sure they looked good and were all breathing, “he said.

The puppies were born on July 10 They are a mix of beagle, cocker spaniel and Labrador and now have five months , Travis said. All but one female, were adopted. The female was kept in the laboratory to have their own baby.

The laboratory puppies differed by painting nails . Travis took two, still called by the color of your nails, Green and Red (green and red).

The birth, announced Wednesday by the specialist journal Public Library of Science ONE and the university itself, could also mean progress to combat hereditary diseases in dogs, as well as to study the development of congenital diseases , since dogs share over 350 inherited disorders and traits with human.

To achieve fertilization, the researchers transferred 19 embryos previously treated the dog chosen to take shape, which gave birth to 7 healthy puppies, 2 a Beagle mother and a father cocker spaniel, and 5 from 2 pairs of fathers and mothers beagle.

“Since the mid 1970s, people have been trying to do this in a dog and have failed “said Alex Travis, associate professor of reproductive biology at the Baker Institute for Animal Health at Cornell College of Veterinary Medicine.

For the success of in vitro fertilization, researchers must fertilize a mature egg and sperm in a laboratory to produce an embryo , and then insert the embryo in a pregnant female in the right time in her reproductive cycle.

How to increase the likelihood

The first challenge was collecting mature eggs Female ready to be fertilized, but ran into the difficulty of knowing what was most optimal time for fertilization, because the reproductive cycles of the dogs are different from other mammals.

In this regard, experts saw, leaving the egg to mature a day, your chances of success were higher .

Once successful fertilization of the egg, The next obstacle was that the female tract of the dog pregnant were about to fertilization, for which the researchers, led by Jennifer Nagashima, uterine conditions simulated in the laboratory.

So, scientists discovered that to add magnesium to the environment, the body of the pregnant mother better welcomed the arrival of sperm .

“We made these two changes, and now we succeed in fertilization rates of 80 to 90 percent, “Travis said.

The last hurdle

The final challenge researchers lay in freezing embryos.

Freezing embryos allows researchers to insert them into the oviducts receptors (called fallopian tubes in humans) at the right time in their reproductive cycle that occurs only once or twice a year.

In this way, the first of the pups born from a frozen in the Western Hemisphere hand group of scientists from Cornell University embryo was born in 2013,

although it was not until now that have succeeded, with this technique, the birth of a litter.

Multiple benefits … even for humans

“We could freeze bank and use of sperm for artificial insemination. We can also freeze oocytes, but in the absence of IVF, we could not use them. Now we can use this technique to preserve the genetics of endangered species “said the teacher.

The IVF will preserve animal breeds to store sperm and eggs of the species and to gestarlas again , in addition to playing endangered species.

As explained Travis, with the new techniques of modification of the genome, researchers from genetic diseases may prevent dogs have hereditary diseases .

“With a combination of gene modification techniques and in vitro fertilization, he added, they can potentially prevent genetic diseases before develop “a also beneficial to understand many diseases suffered by humans and canines also affect progress.