Journal
BIOLOGY OF REPRODUCTION
Volume 84, Issue 2, Pages 336-341Publisher
OXFORD UNIV PRESS INC
DOI: 10.1095/biolreprod.110.086157
Keywords
developmental biology; gamete biology; germ cells; male reproductive tract; meiosis; retinoic acid; retinol; spermatogenesis; spermatogonia
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Funding
- National Institutes of Health (NIH) [EY008061, EY019298]
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Vitamin A (retinol) is required for maintenance of adult mammalian spermatogenesis. In adult rodents, vitamin A withdrawal is followed by a loss of differentiated germ cells within the seminiferous epithelium and disrupted spermatogenesis that can be restored by vitamin A replacement. However, whether vitamin A plays a role in the differentiation and meiotic initiation of germ cells during the first round of mouse spermatogenesis is unknown. In the present study, we found that vitamin A depletion markedly decreased testicular expression of the all-trans retinoic acid-responsive gene, Stra8, and caused meiotic failure in prepubertal male mice lacking lecithin: retinol acyltransferase (Lrat), encoding for the major enzyme in liver responsible for the formation of retinyl esters. Rather than undergoing normal differentiation, germ cells accumulated in the testes of Lrat(-/-) mice maintained on a vitamin A-deficient diet. These results, together with our previous observations that germ cells fail to enter meiosis and remain undifferentiated in embryonic vitamin A-deficient ovaries, support the hypothesis that vitamin A regulates the initiation of meiosis I of both oogenesis and spermatogenesis in mammals.
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