Background: Although the pathophysiology of the testicular damage associated with varicocele remains unclear, but varicocelectomy is considered a suitable technique for the treatment of individuals with clinical varicocele. The current study was designed to assessed semen parameters, chromatin packaging, and pregnancy outcome before and after varicocelectomy. Materials and Methods: Semen sample...

The basic unit of chromatin is a nucleosome included an octamer of the four core histones and 147 base pairs of DNA. Posttranslational histones modifications affect chromatin structure resulting in gene expression changes. CpG islands hypermethylation within the gene promoter regions and the deacetylation of histone proteins are the most common epigenetic modifications. The aberrant patterns of...

Some stallions produce ejaculates of low quality and/or low fertility when used for artificial insemination (AI). The purpose of these five case studies was to use Single Layer Centrifugation (SLC) to select the best spermatozoa from 'problem' ejaculates for subsequent use in AI. Sperm quality, in terms of motility, morphology and chromatin integrity, was improved in the SLC-selected samples co...

SUMMARY Chromatin immunoprecipitation and DNase I hypersensitivity assays with high-throughput sequencing have greatly accelerated the understanding of transcriptional and epigenetic regulation, although data reuse for the community of experimental biologists has been challenging. We created a data portal CistromeFinder that can help query, evaluate and visualize publicly available Chromatin im...

background: sperm dna fragmentation is known as an important cause of male infertility. the influence of sperm dna damage on reproductive potential has been subject of many studies indicating various results and remaining the subject controversial. in this study, we investigated differences of the semen parameters and intracytoplasmic sperm injection (icsi) outcome according to sperm dna fragme...

The aim of this study was to investigate whether the sperm chromatin structure assay (SCSA) results after swim-up are related to fertilization rates, embryo quality and pregnancy rates following in vitro fertilization (IVF). A total of 223 couples undergoing IVF in our hospital from October 2008 to September 2009 were included in this study. Data on the IVF process and sperm chromatin structure...

DNA is organized into chromatin, a complex polymeric material that stores information and controls gene expression. An emerging mechanism for biological organization, particularly within the crowded nucleus, biomolecular phase separation condensed droplets of protein nucleic acids. However, way in which chromatin impacts dynamics condensate formation poorly understood. Here we utilize powerful ...

This two-volume publication contains the proceedings of a NATO Advanced Study Institute, held in April 1978. The material is organized in five sections. In the first section J. Bonner presents a historic review of chromatin research. The following section describes biophysical and chemical methods used in the study of isolated chromatin, such as electron microscopy, circular dichroism, X-ray di...

The absence of a quality control (QC) system is a major weakness for the comparative analysis of genome-wide profiles generated by next-generation sequencing (NGS). This concerns particularly genome binding/occupancy profiling assays like chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP-seq) but also related enrichment-based studies like methylated DNA immunoprecipitation/methylated DNA binding domain seque...

CTCF is a key regulator of nuclear chromatin structure, chromatin organization and gene regulation. The impact of CTCF on transcriptional output is quite varied, ranging from repression, to transcriptional pausing and transactivation. The multifunctional nature of CTCF is mediated, in part, through differential association with protein partners having unique properties. We identified the genera...