Notice of RetractionEffect of Ethidium Bromide on Meiotic Recombination during Spermatogenisis in Male Mice

Notice of Retraction

After careful and considered review of the content of this paper by a duly constituted expert committee, this paper has been found to be in violation of IEEE´s Publication Principles.

We hereby retract the content of this paper. Reasonable effort should be made to remove all past references to this paper.

The presenting author of this paper has the option to appeal this decision by contacting TPII@ieee.org.

Ethidium bromide (EB) is widely used as fluorescent probe of DNA in the experiments of molecular biology, while EB also act as catalytic inhibitor of topoisomerase II (topo II) during DNA replication. EB exhausted or diffused in water and soil will cause impacts on the health of animals and human. Spermatogenisis is a very important process for male animals to produce mature sperm and reproduce offsprings. To examine the effect of EB on spermatogenesis of male animal, we utilized immunofluorescence staining technique to analyze meiotic recombination patterns on synaptonemal complexes (SC) of 465 spermatocytes from the control and tested male mice treated with different doses of EB. Compared with the control, no significant changes in the number of meiotic recombination (MLH1 foci) were observed in the spermatocytes of mice administered with 35 mg EB/kg (22.98±1.67; P=0.19), 70 mg EB/kg (22.85±1.31; P=0.16) or 105 mg EB/kg (22.77±1.52; P=0.11). EB also displayed no dose-related effect on the percentage of cells with meiotic recombination on XY bivalent. Although EB acts as catalytic inhibitor of topo II in premeiotic DNA synthesis during spermatogenesis, no significant effect on meiotic recombination were observed in mid-pachytene spermatocytes of male mice. We deduced that the effect of EB may be conceivably manifested in other biological end points.