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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
(Score: 5, Insightful) by inertnet on Saturday March 28 2020, @10:47PM (4 children)
It's nice that they're trying to treat infertility, but they could make a lot more money creating a male contraceptive.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 29 2020, @12:17AM (2 children)
Doctors and countries could also stop being paternalistic about sterilization. So many women and men who don't want children are denied sterilization that they want, because the doctor thinks they may regret it. This is despite the fact that people who don't have children are the least likely to regret being sterilized. Not to mention, having children is encouraged by societies all over the world, and these same doctors don't seem to care about people who regret having children.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 29 2020, @05:27AM (1 child)
As a doctor of my acquaintance put it: "America is the only country where medical decisions are made in the courtroom."
I don't know whether it's strictly correct, but it might well shine a light on why some doctors are hesitant to perform sterilisations without, at least, in-depth and detailed discussion and the signing of many waivers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 29 2020, @06:20AM
In-depth and detailed discussion is perfectly fine. Making sure the patient understands the procedure is perfectly fine and advisable. Even waivers are fine. What's not fine is denying childless people sterilizations because they 'might regret it,' because 'all women want babies,' or other such nonsense. People, and especially women, really have to doctor shop to find someone willing to sterilization them.
If they're just worried about lawsuits, the studies make it clear that they should worry more about people who already have children, as they are more likely to regret being sterilized.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Sunday March 29 2020, @05:11AM
What we need is an easily applied, and easily reversed permanent male contraceptive. There's supposed to be one in the works where they inject something into your sperm ducts that blocks the sperm, but otherwise leaves everything alone, and doesn't require any surgery (just two small injections, no cutting). And if you ever want it removed, two simple injections can dissolve the blockage, rendering you fertile again. Easier and less painful than a vasectomy, and more easily and reliably reversed, and cheaper all the around too.