Epididymal sperm aneuploidies in three strains of rats detected by multicolor fluorescence in situ hybridization.

A multicolor fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) method was developed to detect aneuploidy and diploidy in epididymal sperm of rats using DNA probes specific for chromosomes 4 and Y. Fourteen healthy young-adult rats from three strains were evaluated: inbred Fisher 344/N/ehs, outbred Sprague-Dawley, and outbred WU Wistar/CPB. The hybridization efficiency of the FISH procedure was >99.9%, the sex-ratio in sperm was ∼1 as expected, and there was no significant variation among two independent scorers. No significant variations were detected within or among strains in the frequencies of sperm disomy for chromosome 4 (1–6.5 per 10,000 cells per animal) or the Y chromosome (0–2.5 per 10,000 cells per animal). There was a trend toward increased variation among Wistar rats. The frequencies of sperm-carrying hyper- and hypohaploidy for chromosome 4 were similar, suggesting a symmetrical mechanism of chromosome gain and loss during meiosis. The frequencies of Y-Y-4-4 sperm, which represent genomic meiosis II errors, did not differ significantly across strains (0.1–0.7 per 10,000 cells per strain). This FISH method for detecting aneuploidy in rat epididymal sperm provides a promising interspecies biomarker of male germ cell aneuploidy and introduces the rat as an animal model for investigating the heritable risk to offspring associated with paternal genotype, physiology, and exposure to environmental mutagens. There appear to be no significant differences among young healthy rats, mice, and men in the baseline frequencies of sperm with Y chromosomal disomy, the only chromosome for which data currently exists for all three species. Environ. Mol. Mutagen. 31:125–132, 1998 © 1998 Wiley-Liss, Inc.