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posted by janrinok on Saturday March 28 2020, @11:41AM   Printer-friendly
from the sperm?-wang?-we-couldn't-make-this-up! dept.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

While some of our body's cells divide in a matter of hours, the process of making sperm, meiosis, alone takes about 14 days from start to finish. And fully six of those days are spent in the stage known as the pachytene, when pairs of chromosomes from an individual's mother and father align and connect.

"This stage is really important, because the pair needs to be aligned for the exchange of genetic material between those two chromosomes," says P. Jeremy Wang, a biologist in Penn's School of Veterinary Medicine. "If anything goes wrong at this stage, it can cause a defect in meiosis and problems in the resulting sperm, leading to infertility, pregnancy loss, or birth defects."

In a new paper in Science Advances, Wang and colleagues have identified an enzyme that plays a crucial role in maintaining this chromosomal pairing during the pachytene stage of meiosis. Without this protein, named SKP1, meiosis cannot proceed to metaphase, the next major developmental stage involved in generating sperm cells.

The finding may help overcome hurdles that have stood in the way of treating certain forms of male infertility, in which a man makes no sperm but in whom sperm's precursor cells, spermatogonia, can be found.

"Reproductive technologies like in vitro fertilization have made a huge difference for infertile patients, but the male needs to have at least some sperm," says Wang. "If the male has no sperm, then the only option is to use donor sperm. But if you can find these spermatogonia, the pre-meiotic germ cells, they could be induced to go through meiosis and make sperm. So SKP1 could be part of the solution to ensuring meiosis continues."

Wang is also hopeful that his finding could aid in basic research on sperm development that his and many other labs pursue. "Right now we use animals to do our research; we don't have a cell culture system to produce sperm," he says. "Manipulating SKP1 and the pathway in which it acts could allow us to set up an in vitro system to produce sperm artificially, which would be a boon for our studies."

[...] "Now that we know SKP1 is required, we're looking for the proteins it interacts with upstream and downstream so we can study this pathway," says Wang.

Journal Reference:

Yongjuan Guan, N. Adrian Leu, Jun Ma, Lukáš Chmátal, Gordon Ruthel, Jordana C. Bloom, Michael A. Lampson, John C. Schimenti, Mengcheng Luo, P. Jeremy Wang. SKP1 drives the prophase I to metaphase I transition during male meiosis. Science Advances, 2020; 6 (13): eaaz2129 DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aaz2129


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  • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday March 28 2020, @01:38PM (5 children)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Saturday March 28 2020, @01:38PM (#976623) Journal

    I've not met a man yet who ever successfully got pregnant. Women do it - mostly with ease. Women are quite fertile. Guys? Not so much. I think what they're concerned about here, is male impotence. Some guys shoot blanks, some guys shoot duds, some guys shoot the real thing.

    Now that we've established that, I'd like to talk to Myrtle, the fertile turtle.

    Two points to the nerds who remember where that came from.

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  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 28 2020, @02:09PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 28 2020, @02:09PM (#976630)

    Impotence = Not able to gear up in order to shoot. May well still be fertile.

    Infertility = Shoot as many duds as you want, it's not gonna achieve anything that lasts.

    Ask any half-educated non-virgin woman about the difference... :-)

    • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday March 28 2020, @03:18PM (1 child)

      by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Saturday March 28 2020, @03:18PM (#976652) Journal

      Alright - and how do virility and motility figure into your lexicon? Again - women are readily fertile, the term is misapplied to men.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 28 2020, @07:05PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 28 2020, @07:05PM (#976717)

        Virility, as per Wikipedia, "refers to any of a wide range of masculine characteristics viewed positively". Hence, it has no business being in this discussion.

        Motility in this context = Can they or can't they swim properly. As such it definitely is linked to male (in)fertility, but not to impotence. Bad motility is however not the only possible cause for male infertility.

        You are simply mistaken in claiming that fertility only applies to women. As per Wikipedia, "Fertility is the natural capability to produce offspring" and as per the Encyclopedia Britannica https://www.britannica.com/science/fertility) [britannica.com] it is the "... ability of an individual or couple to reproduce through normal sexual activity", after which it lists all relevant requirements - both male and female. ).
        -
        Not wanting to admit that you're wrong, you're now trying a "but what about..." in order to divert attention. Won't work.

  • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Saturday March 28 2020, @07:44PM

    by Immerman (3985) on Saturday March 28 2020, @07:44PM (#976733)

    Are you sure it isn't soil that's fertile, and and the term was misapplied to animals?

    In all seriousness, fertility = the natural capability to produce offspring. That applies equally well to men and women. We may not help gestate the offspring, but we still have a vital role to play in producing them.

  • (Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Sunday March 29 2020, @12:24AM

    by hemocyanin (186) on Sunday March 29 2020, @12:24AM (#976779) Journal

    Honestly, if they want to make money off this research, they should figure out how to CAUSE the lack of the enzyme and offer male birth control so that men can better control their futures. Yeah I know, condoms. And they've failed to prevent baby daddies for ages.