BioSpace Collaborative - Epididymis Response Partly Compensates for Spermatozoa Oxidative Defects in snGPx4 and GPx5 Double Mutant Mice

Academic/Biomedical Research
News & Jobs

Employers
Post Job | Search Resumes | Login

NEWSLETTERS
Free Newsletters
Archive
My Subscriptions

NEWS
News by Subject
News by Disease
News by Date
PLoS
Search News
Post Your News
JoVE

CAREER NETWORK
Job Seeker Login
Most Recent Jobs
Search Jobs
Post Resume
Career Fairs
Career Resources
For Employers

HOTBEDS
Regional News
US & Canada
  Biotech Bay
  Biotech Beach
  Genetown
  Pharm Country
  BioCapital
  BioMidwest
  Bio NC
  BioForest
  Southern Pharm
  BioCanada East
  US Device
Europe
Asia

DIVERSITY

PROFILES
Company Profiles

INTELLIGENCE
Research Store

INDUSTRY EVENTS
Research Events
Post an Event
RESOURCES
Real Estate
Business Opportunities

PLoS By Category | Recent PLoS Articles

Biochemistry - Molecular Biology - Physiology - Urology

Epididymis Response Partly Compensates for Spermatozoa Oxidative Defects in snGPx4 and GPx5 Double Mutant Mice
Published: Thursday, June 14, 2012
Author: Anaïs Noblanc et al.

by Anaïs Noblanc, Manon Peltier, Christelle Damon-Soubeyrand, Nicolas Kerchkove, Eléonore Chabory, Patrick Vernet, Fabrice Saez, Rémi Cadet, Laurent Janny, Hanae Pons-Rejraji, Marcus Conrad, Joël R. Drevet, Ayhan Kocer

We report here that spermatozoa of mice lacking both the sperm nucleaus glutathione peroxidase 4 (snGPx4) and the epididymal glutathione peroxidase 5 (GPx5) activities display sperm nucleus structural abnormalities including delayed and defective nuclear compaction, nuclear instability and DNA damage. We show that to counteract the GPx activity losses, the epididymis of the double KO animals mounted an antioxydant response resulting in a strong increase in the global H₂O₂-scavenger activity especially in the cauda epididymis. Quantitative RT-PCR data show that together with the up-regulation of epididymal scavengers (of the thioredoxin/peroxiredoxin system as well as glutathione-S-transferases) the epididymis of double mutant animals increased the expression of several disulfide isomerases in an attempt to recover normal disulfide-bridging activity. Despite these compensatory mechanisms cauda-stored spermatozoa of double mutant animals show high levels of DNA oxidation, increased fragmentation and greater susceptibility to nuclear decondensation. Nevertheless, the enzymatic epididymal salvage response is sufficient to maintain full fertility of double KO males whatever their age, crossed with young WT female mice. More...