Gene Expression Profiles in Different Stages of Mouse Spermatogenic Cells During Spermatogenesis1

Abstract

During spermatogenesis, diploid stem cells differentiate, undergo meiosis and spermiogenesis, and transform into haploid spermatozoa. Various factors have been demonstrated to regulate this marvelous process of differentiation, but the expression of only a few genes specifically involved in spermatogenesis has been studied. In the present study, different types of spermatogenic cells were isolated from Balb/c mice testes of different ages using the velocity sedimentation method, and we determined the expression profiles of 1176 known mouse genes in six different types of mouse spermatogenic cells (primitive type A spermatogonia, type B spermatogonia, preleptotene spermatocytes, pachytene spermatocytes, round spermatids, and elongating spermatids) using Atlas cDNA arrays. Of the 1176 genes on the Atlas Mouse 1.2 cDNA Expression Arrays, we detected 181 genes in primitive type A spermatogonia, 256 in type B spermatogonia, 221 in preleptotene spermatocytes, 160 in pachytene spermatocytes, 141 in round spermatids, and 126 in elongating spermatids. A number of genes were detected as differential expression (up-regulation or down-regulation). Fourteen of the differentially expressed genes have been further confirmed by reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction for their expression characterizations in different types of spermatogenic cells. These results provide more information for further studies into spermatogenesis-related genes and may lead to the identification of genes with potential relevance to spermatogenesis.

Analysis of the gene expression profile of mouse male meiotic germ cells

“…We noticed partial overlapping of our data with the ones published by Yu et al (2003), but also some discrepancies were evident: for instance, cyclin D3 was reported to be not expressed in spermatogonia, but present in spermatocytes. One should note that we used oligonucleotide based DNA chips, in which each gene is represented by 16 couples of probes and mismatch probes, whereas in the gene arrays used by Yu et al each target gene is represented by a single longer oligonucleotide, making the possibility of cross-hybridization easier and hindering the statistical evaluation of the generated signals (see also Section 2).…”

“…Even though, recently, an initial microarray screen of spermatogenic cells at different developmental stages has been reported (Yu et al, 2003), only 1176 mouse target genes were represented in these arrays. We noticed partial overlapping of our data with the ones published by Yu et al (2003), but also some discrepancies were evident: for instance, cyclin D3 was reported to be not expressed in spermatogonia, but present in spermatocytes.…”

Maintaining the male germline: regulation of spermatogonial stem cells

“…While is it known that GDNF is very important in SSC biological activity in the testis, little is known about what regulates its expression in this tissue. GDNF mRNA and protein have been localized in Sertoli cells (Meng et al 2000), spermatogonia, and spermatids in the mouse (Yu et al 2003). Similar results have been reported for rats and humans (Fouchecourt et al 2006).…”

Transcriptome profiling of the developing postnatal mouse testis using next-generation sequencing

“…Large-scale techniques to analyze the transcriptome, such as expressed sequence tags (EST) and cDNA microarrays, have emerged over the past decade, and have been applied to gene expression studies of the mouse testis [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12]. The advent of serial analysis of gene expression (SAGE) has made these technologies more efficient and O'Shaughnessy et al have used SAGE to generate gene expression profiles from the somatic cells of fetal and adult mouse testes [13].…”