A Systematic Analysis of a Deep Mouse Epididymal Sperm Proteome1

Abstract

Spermatozoa are highly specialized cells that, when mature, are capable of navigating the female reproductive tract and fertilizing an oocyte. The sperm cell is thought to be largely quiescent in terms of transcriptional and translational activity. As a result, once it has left the male reproductive tract, the sperm cell is essentially operating with a static population of proteins. It therefore is theoretically possible to understand the protein networks contained in a sperm cell and to deduce its cellular function capabilities. To this end, we performed a proteomic analysis of mouse sperm isolated from the cauda epididymis and confidently identified 2850 proteins, which to our knowledge is the most comprehensive sperm proteome for any species reported to date. These proteins comprise many complete cellular pathways, including those for energy production via glycolysis, beta-oxidation and oxidative phosphorylation, protein folding and transport, and cell signaling systems. This proteome should prove a useful tool for assembly and testing of protein networks important for sperm function.

Dark side of the epididymis: tails of sperm maturation

“…While suggestive of protein biosynthesis and consistent with observations by Chauvin et al . () on an mRNA translational apparatus in spermatozoa, neither their nor our observations warrant as yet a paradigm shift. This will await the conclusive demonstration of in situ mRNA translation by polysomes of sperm‐specific proteins as predicted in our study (Au et al ., 2015a).…”

“…Previous proteomics studies on whole spermatozoa (Chauvin et al ., ; Chocu et al ., ; Baker et al ., ) uncovered GLUT‐3 and other glycolytic metabolic enzymes as prominent. In humans, 436 of the 1056 proteins found in spermatozoa belonged to various metabolic pathways, with glycolytic proteins being the highest expressed (Baker & Aitken, ).…”

The Seminal fluid proteome of the polyandrous Red junglefowl offers insights into the molecular basis of fertility, reproductive ageing and domestication

“…A survey of these 234 proteins revealed that 92.3% and 94.4% of these proteins were also identified in our RJF SF datasets, respectively. We then asked if these predicated sperm proteins identified in our SF dataset represent evolutionary conserved sperm components present in human41 and mouse42 sperm. Of the sperm proteins present in our dataset, 81 (74%) and 68 (62%) were also present in the human and mouse sperm proteomes, respectively, further supporting the potential importance of these proteins in sperm maturation and function.…”

“…The same analysis pipeline was used to reanalyze available raw MS/MS data from fractionated domestic chicken SF samples24. SF proteomes were compared to the chicken blood plasma proteome36, the exosome ExoCarta high quality protein marker dataset47, human blood plasma37, human sperm41, mouse epididymal sperm42 and human seminal plasma35 using orthology relationships in Ensembl Genes 84 (Galgal4). Composition of protein datasets were analyzed using the DAVID Bioinformatics Resource (6.7)8081, including statistical analyses of functional enrichment using the G. gallus genome as the background dataset for comparisons.…”

The sperm proteome of the Pacific oysterCrassostrea gigasand immunolocalization of heat shock proteins

“…Results from proteomic studies can provide overview information on the protein expression of gametes and facilitate studies on gene function, evolution, and therapy etc. (Tops et al 2010;Chauvin et al 2012;Rettie & Dorus 2012;Bayasula et al 2013;McReynolds et al 2014). In C. gigas, two preliminary proteomic studies have been conducted to identify proteins associated with oocyte quality and spermatogenesis (Corporeau et al 2012;Kingtong et al 2013).…”