Part II - CryoStore Summer School
Day 6 - 8 (7-9 July, 2025)
Training school on germinal cells and assisted reproductive technologies in farm animals
Monday 7th July started with a lecture by Rosa Lino Neto Pereira from the National Institute of Agricultural and Veterinary Research in Portugal on the biotechnology of sperm and embryo sexing.
Afterwards, Louise Van-Oudenhove hosted a discussion on professional inequalities related to gender stereotypes in academia. Even though more people are aware of gender inequality in academia and many efforts have been made to improve diversity, progress has been slow and unfairness still exists. One of the biggest problems is gender bias, which negatively affects the careers, work-life balance, and mental well-being of people from underrepresented groups in science. Thank you, Louise, for a very interesting overview and discussion.
The afternoon was filled with a workshop on scientific writing by Catherine Labbé. All PhD students shared their tips and tricks on how to deal with ‘the blank page’ when writing a manuscript.
The morning of Tuesday 8th July was filled with a technical visit of the Synetics cattle cooperative and CryoAqua cryobank.
In the afternoon, the students attended a practical on primordial germ cells (PGCs) collection from hen embryo artery, observation of cultured PGCs, and microinjection of sham PGCs into hen surrogate embryos. The practical was overseen by Maxime Reverchon (SYSAAF) and Marina Govoroun, with great help from DC Firouzeh Sadeghzadeh. The hands-on practical training has been one of the student favorites during this summer school.
The last day of the training school contained a lecture by Eliaou Sellem on animal selective breeding: from the traditional marker-assisted selection (MAS) to the powerful genomic selection. The lectures also introduced application of selective breeding to a new industrial practice in insects.
After a discussion about which innovative (not yet existing) reproductive technologies could bring disruptive improvement to your target species farming/target domain development, Helene Kiefer continued with a lecture on epigenetic in mammalian spermatozoa.
The training school ended with a general conclusion and summary by Ian Mayer and Catherine Labbé.
Thank you to the organizers at INRAE Bretagne-Normandie! A special thanks to Catherine Labbé, DC Mafalda Almeida, and their team who has done a tremendous job in arranging this wonderful event!
Most of the participants of our training school in Rennes, France.