Establishment of mouse androgenetic embryonic stem cells by double sperm injection and differentiation into beating embryoid body

Androgenetic embryonic stem (AgES) cells offer a possible tool for patient-specific pluripotent stem cells that will benefit genomic imprinting studies and clinic applications. However, the difficulty in producing androgenetic embryos and the unbalanced expression of imprinted genes make the therapeutic applicability of AgES cells uncertain. In this study, we produced androgenetic embryos by injecting two sperm into an enucleated metaphase II (MII) oocyte. By this method, 88.48% of oocytes survived after injection, and 20.24% of these developed to the blastocyst stage. We successfully generated AgES cell lines from the androgenetic embryos and assayed the expression of imprinted genes in the cell lines. We found that the morphological characteristics of AgES cells were similar to that of fertilized embryonic stemcells (fES), such as expression of key pluripotent markers, and generation of cell derivatives representing all three germ layers following in vivo and in vitro differentiation. Furthermore, activation of paternal imprinted genes was detected, H19, ASC12 and Tss3 in AgES cell activation levelswere lower while other examined genes showed no significant difference to that of fES cells. Interestingly, among examined maternal imprinted genes, only Mest and Igf2 were significantly increased, while levels of other detected genes were no different to that of fES cells. These results demonstrated that activation of some paternal imprinted genes, as well as recovery of maternal imprinted genes, was present in AgES cells. We differentiated AgES cells into a beating embryoid body in vitro, and discovered that the AgES cells did not show significant higher efficiency in myocardial differentiation potential.