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A rat model of male pregnancy

Rongjia Zhang, Yuhuan Liu
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.06.09.447686
Rongjia Zhang
1Experimental Teaching Demonstration Center of Education Institutions, Faculty of Naval Medicine, Naval Medical University, Shanghai, China
2Department of Nutrition and Food Hygiene, Faculty of Naval Medicine, Naval Medical University, Shanghai, China
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  • For correspondence: zhangrongjia1985@163.com 13651968369@163.com
Yuhuan Liu
3Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Changhai Hospital, Naval Medical University, Shanghai, China
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  • For correspondence: zhangrongjia1985@163.com 13651968369@163.com
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Abstract

Male pregnancy is a unique phenomenon in syngnathidae which refers to the incubation of embryos or fetuses by males. However, whether male mammalian animals have the potential to conceive and maintain pregnancy remains unclear. Here, we constructed a rat model of male pregnancy by a four-step strategy: a heterosexual parabiotic pair was firstly produced by surgically joining a castrated male rat and a female rat. Uterus transplantation (UTx) was then performed on the male parabiont 8 weeks later. After recovery, blastocyst-stage embryos were transplanted to the grafted uterus of male parabiont and the native uterus of female parabiont. Caesarean section was performed at embryonic day (ED) 21.5. The success rate of modeling was only 3.68%, but 10 pups could still be delivered from male parabionts and developed. Our experiment reveals the possibility of normal embryonic development in male mammalian animals, and it may have a profound impact on reproductive biology.

One-sentence summary A rat model of male pregnancy can be constructed in four steps.

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Competing Interest Statement

The authors have declared no competing interest.

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The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license.
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Posted June 10, 2021.
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A rat model of male pregnancy
Rongjia Zhang, Yuhuan Liu
bioRxiv 2021.06.09.447686; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.06.09.447686
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A rat model of male pregnancy
Rongjia Zhang, Yuhuan Liu
bioRxiv 2021.06.09.447686; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.06.09.447686

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