Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications, Vol.503, No.2, 915-920, 2018
Mouse model of chorea-acanthocytosis exhibits male infertility caused by impaired sperm motility as a result of ultrastructural morphological abnormalities in the mitochondrial sheath in the sperm midpiece
Chorea-acanthocytosis (ChAc) is an autosomal recessive hereditary disease characterized by neuro-degeneration in the striatum and acanthocytosis caused by loss-of-function mutations in the Vacuolar Protein Sorting 13 Homolog A (VPS13A) gene, which encodes chorein. We previously produced a ChAc-model mouse with a homozygous deletion of exons 60-61 in Vps13a, which corresponded to the human disease mutation. We found that male ChAc-model mice exhibited complete infertility as a result of severely diminished sperm motility. Immunocytochemical study revealed that chorein-like immunore-activity is abundant only in the midpiece, mitochondria-rich region, of the sperm of wild type mice. They showed no significant differences from wild types in terms of the adenosine 5'-triphosphate (ATP) concentration of their sperm, sperm count, or sexual activity. Electron microscopy revealed abnormal ultrastructural morphology of the mitochondria in the midpiece of sperm from ChAc-model mice. These results suggest that chorein is essential in mouse sperm for the maintenance of ultrastructural mitochondrial morphology and sperm motility. (C) 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Keywords:Chorea-acanthocytosis;ChAc-model mouse;Male infertility;Asthenozoospermia;Vps13a;Chorein;Mitochondria