Androgenix Ltd

Applying medical genomics to a major agricultural need

With over 90% of dairy stock now bred by artificial insemination, farmers are keen to better determine gender. The relative amount of DNA per sperm is a reliable indicator for sorting sperm with either the X or Y chromosome. But the current technology to differentiate for this requires investigating each sperm individually for this characteristic. (A single ejaculate from a healthy bull contains ~1 x10¹⁰ sperm.) By contrast, scientists at Androgenix Limited, at the Institute for Innovation in Biotechnology (IIB), are identifying “surface” markers that effectively self-sort sperm across millions of samples at once. Instead of analysing each sperm’s quantity of DNA, they want the sperm to signal each future calf’s gender to them.