No abstract

Premature ovarian failure (POF) is one of the most common causes of infertility in women. In our present study, we established cyclophosphamide- (CTX-) induced POF rat model and elucidated its effect on ovarian function. We detected the serum estrogen, follicle stimulating hormone, and anti-Müllerian hormone of mice models by ELISA and evaluated their folliculogenesis by histopathology examination. Our study revealed that CTX administration could severely disturb hormone secretion and influence folliculogenesis in rat. This study also detected ovarian cells apoptosis by deoxy-UTP-digoxigenin nick end labeling (TUNEL) and demonstrated marked ovarian cells apoptosis in rat models following CTX administration. In order to explore the potential of human umbilical cord mesenchymal stem cells (UCMSCs) in POF treatment, the above indexes were used to evaluate ovarian function. We found that human UCMSCs transplantation recovered disturbed hormone secretion and folliculogenesis in POF rat, in addition to reduced ovarian cell apoptosis. We also tracked transplanted UCMSCs in ovaries by fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH). The results manifested that the transplanted human UCMSCs could reside in ovarian tissues and could survive for a comparatively long time without obvious proliferation. Our present study provides new insights into the great clinical potential of human UCMSCs in POF treatment.

One of the most important changes during sperm capacitation is the enhancement of tyrosine phosphorylation. However, the mechanisms of protein tyrosine phosphorylation during sperm capacitation are not well studied. We used label-free quantitative phosphoproteomics to investigate the overall phosphorylation events during sperm capacitation in humans and identified 231 sites with increased phosphorylation levels. Motif analysis using the NetworKIN algorithm revealed that the activity of tyrosine phosphorylation kinases insulin growth factor 1 receptor (IGF1R)/insulin receptor is significantly enriched among the up-regulated phosphorylation substrates during capacitation. Western blotting further confirmed inhibition of IGF1R with inhibitors GSK1904529A and NVP-AEW541, which inhibited the increase in tyrosine phosphorylation levels during sperm capacitation. Additionally, sperm hyperactivated motility was also inhibited by GSK1904529A and NVP-AEW541 but could be up-regulated by insulin growth factor 1, the ligand of IGF1R. Thus, the IGF1R-mediated tyrosine phosphorylation pathway may play important roles in the regulation of sperm capacitation in humans and could be a target for improvement in sperm functions in infertile men. Molecular & Cellular Proteomics 14: 10.1074/mcp.M114.045468, 1104-1112, 2015.Austin (1) and Chang (2) discovered that sperm must reside in the female genital tract for a specific period of time to acquire the ability to fertilize an egg and named this process "capacitation." During capacitation, several biochemical changes occur, including enhancement of tyrosine phosphorylation (3), increased intracellular Ca 2ϩ and cAMP levels (4), hyperactivated motility (5), and increased membrane plasma permeability (6). Mature sperm are highly differentiated and specialized cells, there is almost no transcription, and the genomic ribosome is inactive (5). Therefore, regulation of proteins at the level of post-translational modification is expected to play important roles in sperm functions. In mammalian sperm, phosphorylated proteins, protein kinases, and phosphatases are reported to function in sperm motility, capacitation, and acrosome reaction (7, 8). Tyrosine phosphorylation and dephosphorylation are required for sperm to reach, bind, penetrate, and fuse with the oocyte (5). Tyrosinephosphorylated proteins have been found in human (9), monkey (10), rat (11), and mouse (12) sperm. The sperm tail is the main location of protein tyrosine phosphorylation, and tyrosine phosphorylation of the sperm tail is related to hyperactivated motility (13). However, the mechanism of protein tyrosine phosphorylation regulation in sperm capacitation is not well studied. With high throughput ability, proteomics has been used to characterize phosphorylation in sperm. For the human sperm, Ficarro et al. (14) used two-dimensional polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (PAGE), anti-phosphotyrosine antibody labeling, and tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) to identify tyrosine phosphoproteins during capacitation. They identified...

N-Linked glycosylation, a type of post-translational modification, plays important roles in cell-cell recognition, adhesion, and interactions. Although N-linked glycosylated proteins in sperm are known to be important for gamete binding, little is known about the composition of these proteins, particularly glycosylation sites, in humans. In the present study, the use of glyco-FASP, coupled with the tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) method, led to the identification of 554 N-glycosylation sites and 297 N-glycosylated proteins in human sperm. Bioinformatics analysis revealed enrichment of proteins with functions in cell recognition and fertilization. Overall, about 91% of the human sperm N-glycosylated proteins were classified into "membrane", "extracellular region", and "lysosome" groups, based on subcellular localization annotation. Furthermore, glutathione peroxidase 4 (GPX4), a membrane glycoprotein identified in our glycoproteome, was shown to play a significant role in gamete interactions using the in vitro fertilization assay. Accordingly, we propose that characterization of the human sperm glycoproteome should effectively aid in clarifying the mechanisms of fertilization and provide a valuable resource for the future development of male contraceptives and diagnosis of male infertility.