Small-bodied live-bearing fishes (e.g., Xiphophorus species) attract broad attention because of their importance in biomedical research and critical conservation status in natural habitats. Artificial insemination is an essential approach used to establish hybrid lines and for the operation of sperm repositories. The existing mouth-pipetting technique for artificial insemination of live-bearing fishes has not been substantially upgraded since the first implementation in the 1950s. This work developed a low-cost standardized artificial inseminator device (SAID) as open hardware to address issues routinely encountered in insemination by mouth-pipetting, including lack of reproducibility among different users, difficulty in training, and large, unreportable variation in sample volume and pressure during insemination. Community-level enhancements of the SAID prototypes could enable standardized insemination with minimal training and facilitate the participation of research communities in the use of cryopreserved genetic resources. This device can be potentially used for sperm collection for small-bodies aquatic species (e.g., zebrafish).

Details for the development, testing, assembling, and usage can be found in the open-access publication: Elise Harmon, Yue Liu, Hamed Shamkhalichenar, Valentino Browning, Markita Savage, Terrence R Tiersch, and William Todd Monroe. "An Open-Hardware Insemination Device for Small-Bodied Live-Bearing Fishes to Support Development and Use of Germplasm Repositories" Animals (https://www.mdpi.com/2076-2615/12/8/961). This data set includes ‘stl’ files that can be used for 3D printing, and ‘ipt’ files that can be used for design modifications in Autodesk Inventor or Fusion 360.

These prototypes were developed by the Aquatic Germplasm and Genetic Resources Center (AGGRC) at the Louisiana State University Agricultural Center. Original design by Elise Harmon, Yue Liu, Hamed Shamkhalichenar, Valentino Browning, Terrence Tiersch, and W. Todd Monroe, in partnership with the Xiphophorus Genetic Stock Center (XGSC). The prototypes were tested by Grace Nguyen, Kallie Kilchrist, Lucia Arregui, Rose Upton, Jack Koch, and Maria Teresa Gutierrez-Wing. This work was funded in part by the NIH Office of Research Infrastructure Program (ORIP). This device is part of a multi-year project to develop a series of open hardware to support development of standardized and reproducible tools for the research communities that use aquatic models to study human diseases.

Please visit www.aggrc.com to learn more about our work.

All Fusion 360 files can be found on our GitHub through the following link:

https://github.com/aggrc/Standardized-Artificial-Inseminator-Device-SAID-V3.4.8