Histone modification has been implicated in the regulation of mammalian spermatogenesis. However, the association of differently modified histone H3 with a specific stage of germ cells during spermatogenesis is not fully understood. In this study, we examined the localization of variously modified histone H3 in paraffin-embedded sections of adult mouse testis immunohistochemically, focusing on ...

Jmjd1C is one of the Jmjd1 family genes that encode putative demethylases against histone H3K9 and non-histone proteins and has been proven to play an indispensable role in mouse spermatogenesis. Here, we analyzed a newly-bred transgenic mouse strain carrying a Jmjd1C loss-of-function allele in which a β-geo cassette was integrated into the intron of the Jmjd1C locus. Jmjd1C gene-trap homozygou...

TRA98 is a rat monoclonal antibody (mAb) which recognizes specific antigen in the nuclei of germ cells. mAb has been used to understand mechanism cell development and differentiation many studies. In mice, recognized by or GCNA1 reported be GCNA gene product, but despite demonstration immunoreactivity this human testis sperm 1997, humans remains unknown, as date. To identify TRA98, comprehensiv...

In the mouse, the heat shock protein 70-2 (Hsp70-2) has been found to play a critical role in spermatogenesis. The HspA2 gene is the human homologue of the murine Hsp70-2 gene with 91.7% identity in the nucleotide coding sequence. We examined the expression of HspA2 in human tissues. To detect HspA2 expression, antiserum 2A that was raised against mouse Hsp70-2 and that cross-reacted with human...

Cnot7 is a co-factor of transcription regulation, expressed in a variety of tissues including the lung, liver, thyroid gland, and testis. Our previous study (Nakamura et al., 2004) showed that deletion of the Cnot7 gene in mice caused almost no abnormal phenotypes except for male infertility, due to oligo-astheno-teratozoospermia. This study also showed that Cnot7-/- mouse germ cells transplant...

BACKGROUND The RNase III endonuclease Dicer is an important regulator of gene expression that processes microRNAs (miRNAs) and small interfering RNAs (siRNAs). The best-characterized function of miRNAs is gene repression at the post-transcriptional level through the pairing with mRNAs of protein-encoding genes. Small RNAs can also act at the transcriptional level by controlling the epigenetic s...

Gene expression and processing during mouse male germ cell maturation (spermatogenesis) is highly specialized. Previous reports have suggested that there is a high incidence of alternative 3'-processing in male germ cell mRNAs, including reduced usage of the canonical polyadenylation signal, AAUAAA. We used EST libraries generated from mouse testicular cells to identify 3'-processing sites used...

The identification and characterization of germ cell-specific genes are essential if we hope to comprehensively understand the mechanisms of spermatogenesis and fertilization. Here, we searched the mouse UniGene databases and identified 13 novel genes as being putatively testis-specific or -predominant. Our in silico and in vitro analyses revealed that the expressions of these genes are testis-...