DROSHA is a nuclear RNase III enzyme responsible for cleaving primary microRNAs (miRNAs) into precursor miRNAs and thus is essential for the biogenesis of canonical miRNAs. DICER is a cytoplasmic RNase III enzyme that not only cleaves precursor miRNAs to produce mature miRNAs but also dissects naturally formed/synthetic double-stranded RNAs to generate small interfering RNAs (siRNAs). To invest...

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) mainly function as post-transcriptional regulators and are involved in a wide range of physiological and pathophysiological processes such as cell proliferation, differentiation, apoptosis, and tumorigenesis. Mouse testes express a large number of miRNAs. However, the physiological roles of these testicular miRNAs remain largely unknown. Using microarray and quantitative real...

The process of mammalian spermatogenesis involves both mitosis and meiosis at the same developmental age. Most previous studies have focused on mitotic spindle orientation during development, but not during meiotic division. Therefore, we asked whether there is a difference between mitotic and meiotic germ cell spindle orientation during rat spermatogenesis. Our results showed that mitotic spin...

-Cigarette smoking prevalence is still increasing in the developing world especially among men mainly in central Asia, east Europe and Africa. Furthermore, maternal cigarette smoking during pregnancy has multiple deleterious effects on the offspring, which may persist into adulthood. The present study was done to evaluate the pituitary-testicular activities of rats subjected to chronic nicotine...

The aim of hormonal male contraception is to prevent unintended pregnancies by suppressing spermatogenesis. Hormonal male contraception is based on the principle that exogenous administration of androgens and other hormones such as progestins suppress circulating gonadotropin concentrations, decreasing testicular Leydig cell and Sertoli cell activity and spermatogenesis. In order to achieve mor...

Recent studies have reported that caspase 7 has an apoptotic and nonapoptotic function. However, the relationship between caspase 7 and spermatogenesis remains unknown. This study aimed to investigate the possible function of caspase 7 during normal and abnormal spermatogenesis. The cleaved form of caspase 7 was detected in testis tissues at different postpartum times (5-14 weeks) by qRT-PCR, W...

The current issue of the Iranian Rehabilitation Journal contains original research evaluating the efficacy of addiction rehabilitation an evaluation of a child rehabilitation system for community based research, reading program for children with down syndrome, auditory stream segregation in auditory processing disorder, speech and language disorders, quality of life of adolescents with hearing ...

Maintenance of normal male fertility relies on the process of spermatogenesis which is under complex endocrine control by mechanisms involving gonadotropin and steroid hormones. Although testosterone is the primary sex steroid in males, estrogen is locally produced in the testis and plays a very crucial role in male fertility. This is evident from presence of both the estrogen receptors alpha (...

SET is a multifunctional protein involved in regulating many biological processes of the cell cycle. It is also a regulator of steroidogenesis in the ovary. However, the expression of SET protein in testis, and its function, still remains ambiguous. In this study, we observed the expression of SET in the testes of mice at different developmental stages, and have discussed its potential function...