Sea urchin sperm as a vector of foreign genetic information

Paracentrotus lividus Strongylocentrotus purpuratus and Arbacia lixula sperm is capable of incorporating homologous as well as heterologous macromolecules and vehiculating them into eggs of the same species. If Strongylocentrotus purpuratus eggs are fertilized with sperm previously incubated with pSV2-cat or pRSV-cat plasmids, chloramphenicol acetyl transferase (CAT) activity is found in the embryos at the swimming blastula stage, showing that the plasmids bearing the CAT gene are vehiculated by the sperm into the eggs and the bacterial gene is expressed in the embryos.