Том 48, № 6 (2017)

Increasing anthropogenic impact on the natural environment determines the urgency and significance of provision of the all-round estimation and monitoring of its consequences. The methodology of the health of environment estimation based on characteristics of the condition of different species of living beings by the developmental homeostasis is proposed as an operational approach for this problem solution. The elaborated methodology approbation during the execution of a number of the projects on the estimation of the environmental quality under different types of the anthropogenic impact allows one to characterize the possibilities of used approaches for estimation of the environment’s auspiciousness for living beings and humans. This also opens up the possibility to estimate the range of possible changes of the developmental homeostasis in real natural conditions.

Developmental and functional abnormalities of the reproductive system of fishes are examined in connection with the changes in conditions of their existence, in particular, the anthropogenic influence. The author’s own data and literature sources on abnormalities of gametogenesis and gonadogenesis in a number of sturgeon species in relation to anthropogenic pressure on the water bodies are analyzed, and their systematization is performed. It is shown that these abnormalities, which are disorders of the stability of development, can serve as indicators of the environmental health.

Testicular compartment that includes rete testis and the adjacent transitional zone (TZ) of seminiferous tubules has been examined only by light and electron microscopy until now. However, recent data suggest that adult Sertoli cells (SCs) located in this compartment are capable to commence active proliferation both in vitro and in vivo, and hence, are not completely differentiated. The present study is first to investigate mouse rete testis and TZ during the postembryonic development and is intended to determine new protein markers for cells of this compartment, the state of their differentiation, and also their proliferative activity. It was demonstrated that rete testis cells were stained for SC marker Wt1 transiently, until day 25 of postembryonic development, then the staining disappeared. Another SC marker Dmrt1 that involved in the process of SC differentiation was not expressed in the rete testis cells during the postnatal development and in the adult state. One more feature that distinguished rete testis cells from SCs was lower proliferative activity of rete testis cells in 2–6 days old mice. SCs from TZ expressed Wt1 at all ages examined. However, at earlier ages, they were heterogeneous on Dmrt1 expression, and only by day 25, Dmrt1 expression was completely disappeared from TZ SCs. It is interesting that on day 18 when SCs in seminiferous tubules complete differentiation and exit from cell cycle proliferation of TZ SCs was at significantly higher level. It is also showed that in 3D culture, Wt1+ cells isolated from rete testis and TZ of 60 days old GFP male mice were capable to form seminiferous tubules de novo in cooperation with testicular cells from 6 days old mice.