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Aquaculture is the fastest-growing food-production sector and is striving to become a long-term sustainable approach to meet the rising global demand for seafood. During the expansion and advancement of aquaculture, minimizing ecological impacts should occur concomitantly with maximizing production. Farmed fish, often genetically dis-

Optimizing the conditions for stem cell culture is an essential prerequisite for the efficient utilization of stem cells. In the culture of fish embryonic stem cells (ESCs) or ESC-like cells, embryo extracts are important for stable growth, but there is no rule for determining the developmental stage of the embryos used to obtain extracts. Therefore, this study investigated the effects of the developmental stage of extract donor embryos on the culture of Oryzias dancena ESC-like cells. O. dancena ESC-like cells were cultured in different media containing each of four types of embryo extract depending on the developmental stage of the extract donor embryos. Growth, morphology, colony-forming ability, alkaline phosphatase (AP) activity, and embryoid body (EB) formation of the cells were investigated. While the developmental stage of the extract donor embryos did not influence the growth, morphology, AP activity, or EB formation of ESC-like cells, colony-forming ability was affected and the pattern of the effects differed completely between the two ESC-like cells investigated. These results suggest that the developmental stage of extract donor embryos should be selected carefully for the culture of ESC-like cells, according to the research purpose and type of cell line.

Fish ovarian germline stem cells (OGSCs) have great potential in various biological fields due to their ability to generate large numbers of mature eggs. Therefore, selective enrichment of OGSCs is a prerequisite for successful applications. To determine the optimal conditions for the enrichment of OGSCs from Japanese medaka (Oryzias latipes), we evaluated the effects of Percoll density gradient centrifugation (PDGC), differential plating (DP), and a combination of both methods. Based on cell morphology and gene expression of germ cell-specific Vasa and OGSC-specific Nanos2, we demonstrated that of seven density fractions obtained following PDGC, the 30–35% density fraction contained the highest proportion of OGSCs, and that Matrigel was the most effective biomolecule for the enrichment of Oryzias latipes OGSCs by DP in comparison to laminin, fibronectin, gelatin, and poly-l-lysine. Furthermore, we confirmed that PDGC and DP in combination significantly enhanced the efficiency of OGSC enrichment. The enriched cells were able to localize in the gonadal region at a higher efficiency compared to non-enriched ovarian cells when transplanted into the developing larvae. Our approach provides an efficient way to enrich OGSCs without using OGSC-specific surface markers or transgenic strains expressing OGSC-specific reporter proteins.

This study was conducted to identify embryonic stem cell (ESC) activities of a long-term cultured embryonic cell line previously derived from blastula-stage Oryzias dancena embryos. Five sub-cell lines were established from the embryonic cell line via clonal expansion of single cells. ESC activities, including clonogenicity, alkaline phosphatase (AP) activity, and differentiation capacity, were examined in the five sub-cell lines. We observed both clonogenicity and AP activity in all five sub-cell lines, but the proportion of cells that exhibited both properties was significantly different among them. Even though we detected different formation rates and sizes of embryoid body (EB) among these cells, all lines were stably able to form EBs and further induction for differentiation showed their capability to differentiate into other cell types in a spontaneous manner. From this study, we determined that the embryonic cell lines examined possessed heterogeneous ESC activities and can be utilized as a marine model system for fish ESC-based research.