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SPINK2 deficiency causes infertility by inducing sperm defects in heterozygotes and azoospermia in homozygotes

Azoospermia, characterized by the absence of spermatozoa in the ejaculate, is a common cause of male infertility with a poorly characterized etiology. Exome sequencing analysis of two azoospermic brothers allowed the identification of a homozygous splice mutation in SPINK2, encoding a serine proteas...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Kherraf, Zine‐Eddine, Christou‐Kent, Marie, Karaouzene, Thomas, Amiri‐Yekta, Amir, Martinez, Guillaume, Vargas, Alexandra S, Lambert, Emeline, Borel, Christelle, Dorphin, Béatrice, Aknin‐Seifer, Isabelle, Mitchell, Michael J, Metzler‐Guillemain, Catherine, Escoffier, Jessica, Nef, Serge, Grepillat, Mariane, Thierry‐Mieg, Nicolas, Satre, Véronique, Bailly, Marc, Boitrelle, Florence, Pernet‐Gallay, Karin, Hennebicq, Sylviane, Fauré, Julien, Bottari, Serge P, Coutton, Charles, Ray, Pierre F, Arnoult, Christophe
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5538632/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28554943
http://dx.doi.org/10.15252/emmm.201607461
Descripción
Sumario:Azoospermia, characterized by the absence of spermatozoa in the ejaculate, is a common cause of male infertility with a poorly characterized etiology. Exome sequencing analysis of two azoospermic brothers allowed the identification of a homozygous splice mutation in SPINK2, encoding a serine protease inhibitor believed to target acrosin, the main sperm acrosomal protease. In accord with these findings, we observed that homozygous Spink2 KO male mice had azoospermia. Moreover, despite normal fertility, heterozygous male mice had a high rate of morphologically abnormal spermatozoa and a reduced sperm motility. Further analysis demonstrated that in the absence of Spink2, protease‐induced stress initiates Golgi fragmentation and prevents acrosome biogenesis leading to spermatid differentiation arrest. We also observed a deleterious effect of acrosin overexpression in HEK cells, effect that was alleviated by SPINK2 coexpression confirming its role as acrosin inhibitor. These results demonstrate that SPINK2 is necessary to neutralize proteases during their cellular transit toward the acrosome and that its deficiency induces a pathological continuum ranging from oligoasthenoteratozoospermia in heterozygotes to azoospermia in homozygotes.