Protein Synthesis in Mouse Spermatozoa

Effect of incubation conditions, inhibitors and seminal plasma on protein synthesis in ram spermatozoa

“…Means with different superscript letters differ significantly (P<0001). Bragg & Handel ( 1979) ; the differences in incubation conditions may explain the different results with rabbit spermatozoa. The present results, however, confirm previous observations on other species.…”

“…Mature bull, human and mouse spermatozoa synthesize protein at a significant rate in vitro (Premkumar & Bhargava, 1972; Mujica, 1976;Bragg & Handel, 1979). Experiments utilizing protein inhibitors indicated that these newly synthesized proteins are of mitochondrial origin.…”

Mammalian sperm translate nuclear-encoded proteins by mitochondrial-type ribosomes

“…However, indications to the contrary include the findings that mammalian spermatozoa contain nuclear-encoded mRNAs (Wykes et al 1997;Miller et al 1999;Ostermeier et al 2002) in addition to their ability to synthesize mitochondrial-encoded RNA (Premkumar and Bhargava 1972;Hecht and Williams 1978;Alcivar et al 1989) and proteins (Premkumar and Bhargava 1972;Bragg and Handel 1979). It is interesting that those papers, in spite of being published in respectable journals, did not disprove the generally accepted axiom that spermatozoa are translationally and transcriptionally incapable.…”

The ’omics revolution and our understanding of sperm cell biology

“…7 However, in what seems to be a contradiction, by adding a mixture of [ 3 H]-amino acids to washed Balb/c mouse spermatozoa, incorporation of activity appeared to increase linearly over a 3-h time period. 8 This activity was shown to be sensitive to the mitochondrial ribosomal protein synthesis inhibitor chloramphenicol, but not the cytoplasmic protein synthesis inhibitor, cyclohexamine, suggesting mitochondrial involvement. 8 Supporting this argument, autoradiographs of mouse sperm following incubation clearly showed that the radiolabeled amino acids localized to the sperm midpiece.…”

“…8 This activity was shown to be sensitive to the mitochondrial ribosomal protein synthesis inhibitor chloramphenicol, but not the cytoplasmic protein synthesis inhibitor, cyclohexamine, suggesting mitochondrial involvement. 8 Supporting this argument, autoradiographs of mouse sperm following incubation clearly showed that the radiolabeled amino acids localized to the sperm midpiece. Furthermore, SDS-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (PAGE) demonstrated that [ 3 H]-amino acids were incorporated into full length proteins, and therefore, the activity was not a result of free amino acids storage with the sperm cells.…”