Identification of nonfunctional SPATA20 causing acephalic spermatozoa syndrome in humans.
Xiang WangChuan JiangSiyu DaiGan ShenYihong YangYing ShenPublished in: Clinical genetics (2022)
Acephalic spermatozoa syndrome (ASS) is a rare and severe type of teratozoospermia characterized by the predominance of headless spermatozoa in the ejaculate. However, knowledge about the causative genes associated with ASS in humans is limited. Loss-of-function of SPATA20 has been suggested to result in the separation of the sperm head and flagellum in mice, whereas there have been no cases reporting SPATA20 variants leading to human male infertility. In this study, a nonsense mutation in SPATA20 (c.619C > T, p.Arg207*) was first identified in an ASS patient. Moreover, this variant contributed to the degradation of SPATA20 and was associated with decreased expression of SPATA6, which plays a vital role in the assembly of the sperm head-tail conjunction in humans. In addition, the infertility caused by loss-of-function mutation of SPATA20 might not be rescued by intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI). Collectively, our findings suggested that SPATA20 might be required for sperm head-tail conjunction formation in humans, the nonfunction of which may lead to male infertility related to ASS. The discovery of the loss-of-function mutation in SPATA20 enriches the gene variant spectrum of human ASS, further contributing to improved diagnosis, genetic counseling and prognosis for male infertility.
Keyphrases
- endothelial cells
- copy number
- healthcare
- polycystic ovary syndrome
- poor prognosis
- optic nerve
- induced pluripotent stem cells
- type diabetes
- emergency department
- gene expression
- hepatitis c virus
- high throughput
- dna methylation
- hiv infected
- adipose tissue
- long non coding rna
- ultrasound guided
- optical coherence tomography
- pluripotent stem cells
- high fat diet induced