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The muntjacs (Muntiacus, Cervidae) have been extensively studied in terms of chromosomal and karyotypic evolution. However, little is known about their meiotic chromosomes particularly the recombination patterns of homologous chromosomes. We used immunostained surface spreads to visualise synaptonemal complexes (SCs), recombination foci and kinetochores with antibodies against marker proteins. As in other mammals pachytene was the longest stage of meiotic prophase. 39.4% of XY bivalents lacked MLH1 foci compared to less than 0.5% of autosomes. The average number of MLH1 foci per pachytene cell in M. reevesi was 29.8. The distribution of MLH1 foci differed from other mammals. On SCs with one focus, the distribution was more even in M. reevesi than in other mammals; for SCs that have two or more MLH1 foci, usually there was a larger peak in the sub-centromere region than other regions on SC in M. reevesi. Additionally, there was a lower level of interference between foci in M. reevesi than in mouse or human. These observations may suggest that the regulation of homologous recombination in M. reevesi is slightly different from other mammals and will improve our understanding of the regulation of meiotic recombination, with respect to recombination frequency and position. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

orbic acid (AsA, vitamin C) is one of the most important nutritional quality factors in many horticultural crops and has many biological activities in the human body. Dehydroascorbate reductase (EC 1.8.5.1; DHAR) plays an important role in maintaining the normal level of ascorbic acid (AsA) by recycling oxidized ascorbic acid. To increase AsA content of potato, we isolated and characterized the cDNAs encoding two isoform DHARs localized in cytosol and chloroplast from potato, and developed two types of transgenic potato plants overexpressing cytosolic DHAR gene and chloroplastic DHAR, respectively. Incorporation of the transgene in the genome of potato was confirmed by PCR and real time RT-PCR. The overexpression of cytosolic DHAR significantly increased DHAR activities and AsA contents in potato leaves and tubers, whereas chloroplastic DHAR overexpression only increased DHAR activities and AsA contents in leaves, and did not change them in tubers. These results indicated that AsA content of potato can be elevated by enhancing recycling ascorbate via DHAR overexpression, moreover, cytosolic DHAR might play main important roles in improving the AsA contents of potato tubers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on frequency-domain oversampling and the Bayesian Gauss–Markov theorem, we propose a fractionally spaced frequency-domain minimum mean-square error (FSFD-MMSE) receiver for orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing systems. It is shown that frequency diversity inherent in a frequency-selective fading channel can be extracted and exploited by the proposed FSFD-MMSE receiver. This diversity advantage outweighs the effect of intercarrier interference generated by frequency-domain oversampling, due largely to the MMSE receiver's interference suppression capability. Numerical results show that the FSFD-MMSE receiver outperforms the conventional MMSE receiver under both ideal and practical situations (i.e., with frequency offset, channel estimation errors, and even doubly selective channel fading). In addition, the FSFD-MMSE receiver only needs a fast Fourier transform size that is no larger than N + Q - 1\ (N = \number of data subcarriers, and \break Q = \number of resolvable multipath components). [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this research, biological function of CsNMAPK, encoding a mitogen-activated protein kinase of cucumber, was investigated under salt and osmotic stresses. Northern blot analysis showed that the expression of CsNMAPK was induced by salt and osmotic stresses in the cucumber root. In order to determine whether CsNMAPK was involved in plant tolerance to salt and osmotic stresses, transgenic tobacco plants constitutively overexpressing CsNMAPK were generated. Northern and Western blot analysis showed that strong signals were detected in the RNA and protein samples extracted from transgenic lines, whereas no signal was detected in the wild type tobacco, indicating that CsNMAPK was successfully transferred into tobacco genome and overexpressed. The results of seed germination showed that germination rates of transgenic lines were significantly higher than wild type under high salt and osmotic stresses. In addition, seed growth of transgenic lines was much better than wild type under salt and osmotic stresses. These results indicated that overexpression of CsNMAPK positively regulated plant tolerance to salt and osmotic stresses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Folliculogenesis is a critical process during mammalian development, but little is known about the mechanisms underlying primordial follicular formation, growth, and activation. The objective of this study was to assess the effect of continuous insulin exposure on folliculogenesis in 16.5 dpc and 3 dpp mouse ovaries in vitro. The results demonstrated that 5 μg/ml insulin promotes the phosphorylation of Akt and the primordial follicular assembly and activation process via the InsR/PI3K/Akt signaling pathway in the 16.5 dpc fetal mouse ovaries cultured in vitro. However, the presence of 5 μg/ml insulin represses the phosphorylation of Akt and the follicular assembly and activation process in the 3 dpp mouse ovaries cultured in vitro. Furthermore, in vitro cultures of 3 dpp mouse ovaries with insulin can repress the expression of Pten. In conclusion, folliculogenesis was stage-specifically regulated by insulin via the Akt signaling pathway in vitro. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS) technology has revealed that microRNAs (miRNAs) are capable of exhibiting frequent differences from their corresponding mature reference sequences, generating multiple variants: the isoforms of miRNAs (isomiRs). These isomiRs mainly originate via the imprecise and alternative cleavage during the pre-miRNA processing and post-transcriptional modifications that influence miRNA stability, their sub-cellular localization and target selection. Although several tools for the identification of isomiR have been reported, no bioinformatics resource dedicated to gather isomiRs from public NGS data and to provide functional analysis of these isomiRs is available to date. Thus, a free online database, IsomiR Bank has been created to integrate isomiRs detected by our previously published algorithm CPSS. In total, 2727 samples (Small RNA NGS data downloaded from ArrayExpress) from eight species (Arabidopsis thaliana, Drosophila melanogaster, Danio rerio, Homo sapiens, Mus musculus, Oryza sativa, Solanum lycopersicum and Zea mays) are analyzed. At present, 308 919 isomiRs from 4706 mature miRNAs are collected into IsomiR Bank. In addition, IsomiR Bank provides target prediction and enrichment analysis to evaluate the effects of isomiRs on target selection. Availability and implementation: IsomiR Bank is implemented in PHP/PERL+MySQL+R format and can be freely accessed at http://mcg.ustc.edu.cn/bsc/isomir/ [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, the impact of Chinese rural taxation reform (RTR) on farm household income is investigated, using panel data collected from nearly 1,000 farm households in fifteen villages in the Yangtze river delta (YRD) area between 1995 and 2005. The results from fixed-effect regression show that RTR had a significant impact, increasing farmer income by 6.82 percent. This increase is much more than the direct income increase brought about by an exemption from the agricultural tax. When the dynamic impact of RTR on farm household income was examined, it was found that the most significant income increase occurred in the first three years after the execution of the new tax policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The constellation design for differential space-time modulation usually requires to construct L (constellation size) unitary matrices making the design complexity increasing rapidly with L In this correspondence, we propose a new construction technique, which exploits the rotational invariance of unitary matrices and the property of MPSK modulation. The proposed constellations are derivable from a smaller set of D = L/M unitary matrices (via rotations defined by an M-ary PSK symbol) which, in turn, are parameterized by two unitary matrices U1 and U2. They share some good property of group constellations thereby considerably simplifying the optimization of U1 and U2. They also possess other good properties which allow for simplified maximum likelihood (ML) decoding. Extensive numerical examples are presented to demonstrate that the proposed constellations in general have larger diversity products than other constellations and thus, better error performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The minimum mean square error combining (MMSEC) scheme performs best among various equalization and combining schemes for downlink multicarrier code-division multiple access (MC-CDMA) However, it is also the most computationally complex to realize as it involves the complex matrix inversion operation of a large matrix. In this paper, a new method is proposed to calculate the equalizer coefficient for MMSEC based on reduced-size matrices. It is shown that as long as the number of users is even, the matrix inversion size is reduced to at least Nc/2, where Nc is the number of subcarriers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

M-ary orthogonal modulation with noncoherent detection is an attractive scheme for the reverse link of direct- sequence code-division multiple access (DS-CDMA). The performance analysis of such DS-CDMA systems with random spreading sequences has been thoroughly studied. However, little satisfactory work has been done for systems with deterministic spreading sequences, regardless of their importance from the viewpoint of multiple-access interference reduction. To fill this void, we consider deterministic spreading sequences in this paper. We first present a detailed error performance analysis for the reverse link of DS-CDMA with M-ary orthogonal modulation on both additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) and multipath Rayleigh.fading channels. Then, we formulate the design of spreading sequences for the DS-CDMA system as a nonlinear discrete optimization problem. Two steps are taken to complete the task of sequence optimization: 1) A large code space is generated by permutating a single binary code matrix and imposing a Kronecker product structure on candidate code matrices, and 2) an evolutionary algorithm is applied to efficiently perform optimization. Numerical examples show that the optimized sequences considerably improve the system performance, especially when the number of users is relatively small or an AWGN channel is considered. In addition, our proposed approach can make a good tradeoff between code performance and search complexity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It was shown by Slimane that the bit error rate (BER) performance of the downlink of multicarrier code-division multiple-access (MC-CDMA) systems can be improved significantly by employing quadrature spreading sequences instead of binary Walsh-Hadamard sequences. Inspired by Slimane's work, we propose a class of complex-valued spreading sequences, which are mathematically derivable from the Kronecker product of some basic matrices. The good algebraic structure in the proposed spreading sequences, when applied in a BPSK based MC-CDMA system, can be exploited for multiple access interference (MAI) suppression, for order-2 diversity combining, and for the reduction of peak-to-average power ratio. The new spreading sequences outperform the Slimane's quadrature sequences, as evidenced by various numerical results. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Orthogonality restoring combining (ORC) is appealing for the downlink of multicarrier code-division multiple- access (MC-CDMA) since it can eliminate multiple access interference (MAI) which would otherwise fundamentally limit the CDMA system performance. The ORC output instantaneous signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), however, takes the form of a harmonic mean of SNRs on different subcarriers, making its error performance difficult to analyze. In this paper, we tackle the problem in the framework of characteristic functions (CF) ending up with useful results for various modulation schemes including M-ary phase-shift keying (MPSK) and M-ary quadrature amplitude modulation (MQAM). The general solution for arbitrary real m can be evaluated numerically, and reduces to closed form for m being an odd multiple of half. Extensive simulations are conducted to verify the theoretical analysis. It is found that in general MQAM outperforms MPSK, and the error performance of MC-CDMA with ORC is insensitive to the number of subcarriers and to the correlation among subcarriers. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the bit-error rate (BER) analysis of code-division multiple-access (CDMA) systems, a Gaussian approximation is widely used to tackle the multiple access interference (MAI), although it does not always offer satisfactory accuracy. This paper investigates the BER performance of synchronous multicarrier (MC) CDMA systems over Nakagami-m-fading channels in a different way. We present an accurate and unified BER analysis for synchronous MC-CDMA systems. To facilitate our analysis, we assume a synchronous uplink, whose BER performance can be intuitively viewed as a lower BER bound of the more realistic asynchronous MC-CDMA. The basic idea is that, by using the Gauss-Chebyshev quadrature (GCQ) rule to perform inverse Laplace transform, an accurate BER can be numerically obtained from the moment generating function (MAG) of the output decision variable at a receiver, without any assumption about the MAI distribution. First, signals on all subcarriers of MC-CDMA systems are assumed to experience independent fading. Two standard diversity combining techniques, equal gain combining (EGC) and maximal ratio combining (MRC), are employed. The BER performance in both downlink and synchronous uplink is analyzed. We then consider a more general system model, in which signals on different subcarriers undergo correlated fading. The asymptotic (error floor) performance of downlink MC-CDMA with MRC is studied. In particular, we investigate the effects of spreading sequences and the delay spread of the channel on the system performance. Numerical examples are provided to show the main results of this paper. The accuracy of the GCQ and MGF based solution is verified by different approaches such as Monte Carlo integration and the exact residue method. In addition, the accuracy of the commonly used Gaussian approximation is also examined. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The bit error rate (BER) of an asynchronous multicarrier code-division multiple-access system in an additive white Gaussian noise channel is evaluated using Monte Carlo integration and moment-generating function methods. The BER performance for different families of spreading sequences is investigated. Numerical results show that the approach of a recently published paper cannot give an accurate BER because the interference from other subcarriers has been omitted. Some new findings about the performance of different sequences are also presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to detect aneuploidy in interphase human lymphocytes, both in vivo and in vitro, fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) was carried out on binucleated cells cytokinesis-blocked by cytochalasin B at the first mitosis after phytohemagglutinin stimulation. A pericentric chromosome-21-specific DNA probe prepared from yeast artificial chromosome clone 881D2 by the polymerase chain reaction was employed. One thousand binucleated cells per individual were scored from cultures from twelve trisomy 21 patients aged 0.01–8.9 years (mean 4.3 years) and 20 normal children of similar age. Of trisomy 21 patients, increased frequencies of disomic cells in vivo (1.690±1.070%) and cells containing six signals with nondisjunction (0.822±0.554%) were found, compared with those of monosomic 21 cells in vivo (0.265±0.130%) and cells containing four signals with nondisjunction in normal children (0.369±0.250%; P=0.000 and P=0.000, respectively). These results show that malsegregation of chromosome 21 occurs more often in trisomic 21 cells than in disomic cells from normal children. The frequency of nondisjunction was significantly higher than the loss of chromosome 21 in both cultured trisomic (0.822±0.554% vs 0.043±0.049%, P=0.000) and disomic (0.369±0.250% vs 0.010±0.030%, P=0.000) cells. Comparisons of in vivo and in vitro data on aneuploidy indicate that a cell selection mechanism may exist in vivo. All these results show that FISH, with a chromosome-specific probe, on binucleated lymphocytes is a powerful tool for simultaneously detecting mosaic cell lines in vivo and malsegregation (loss and nondisjunction) of a corresponding chromosome in vitro in the same cell population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a study which determines and characterizes the novel legumin α-amylase inhibitor (CLAI) from Cicer arietinum seeds or chickpea. It notes that the leagumin α-amylase inhibitor was extracted from the chickpea seed powder with tris-buffered saline and the protein concentration was determined using bovine serum albumin as standard. It measures the inhibitory activities of CLAI toward several α-amylase inhibitor as well as its amino sequence.

The error performance of M-ary frequency shift keying (MFSK) with square-law diversity combining (SLDC) on correlated Nakagami-m fading channels was previously analyzed in the literature. The results are either in the form of an integral, or a closed form involving the calculation of higher-order derivatives, or other closed forms subject to the constraint of integer-valued fading parameters. In this letter, we formulate the problem in the framework of Lauricellar hypergeometric functions leading to a simple symbol-error-rate formula involving only some elementary functions for generic correlated Nakagami fading environments [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The bit error rate of a synchronous multicarrier code-division multiple-access system operating in a Rayleigh fading channel is calculated based on a moment generating function method, without any assumption on the distribution of multiple access interference. Two closed-form BER expressions are derived. Moreover, the BER can be accurately evaluated by using a Gauss-Chebyshev quadrature rule based numerical approach [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Downlink multicarrier code-division multiple access (MC-CDMA) with maximal ratio combining (MRC) in correlated Rayleigh fading channels is considered. An exact error floor in a closed-form expression is provided based on the characteristic function (CF) and residue calculation method. Numerical results show that orthogonal spreading sequences (Walsh and orthogonal Gold sequences) perform better than nonorthogonal sequences (Gold sequences) and Walsh codes have the best performance. In addition, downlink MC-CDMA is found to benefit from the correlation between subcarriers [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Merrifield resin-supported hydrocinchonidinium salts containing particular functional groups that can participate in hydrogen bonding were prepared and evaluated as chiral phase-transfer catalysts using the asymmetric benzylation of glycine imine ester. These electronically modified Merrifield resin-supported phase-transfer catalysts generally provided better enantioselectivities compared to the unmodified ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The multidrug and toxic compound extrusion (MATE) family plays pivotal roles in the detoxification process in plants, while no information has been provided for this gene family in melon (Cucumis melo L.) thus far, limiting our understanding of its functions in melon acclimation to stressful environments. In this study, a total of 39 MATEs (CmMATE1-CmMATE39) were observed in the melon genome; these were unevenly distributed in all chromosomes, with the most on Chromosome 1. Based on their orthologous relationship with those from Arabidopsis, rice, and sorghum, melon MATEs were clustered into three subfamilies of Clades I, II, and III, wherein 23, 9, and 7 members were included, respectively. Variable exon number was observed in CmMATEs, and the most were harbored by CmMATE8. Gene ontology (GO) term and cis-regulatory element (CRE) analyses pointed to the potential roles of CmMATEs in both the regulation of melon development and acclimation to various abiotic and biotic stressors. The RNA-seq and qRT-PCR (quantitative real-time PCR) results demonstrated that under normal growth conditions, CmMATEs were expressed in a tissue- and development-specific manner, while their abundance apparently varied in a stress-dependent manner when melon plants were exposed to unfavorable environmental conditions. Altogether, these observations could expand our knowledge about the plant MATE family and benefit functional genomics analysis for CmMATEs in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents RAD51AP2 is required for efficient meiotic recombination between X and Y chromosomes. Topic discussed include Faithful segregation of X and Y chromosomes requires meiotic recombination to form a crossover between them in the pseudo autosomal region (PAR); and double-strand breaks (DSBs) than crossovers, one crossover must be formed from the one or two DSBs in PARs, implying the existence of a sex chromosome–specific recombination mechanism.

Family with sequence similarity 181 (Fam181) is a gene family with two paralogues (Fam181a and Fam181b) found among vertebrates. Fam181a exhibits dynamic and stage-specific expression during murine embryo development. Furthermore, searching in the National Center for Biotechnology Information database revealed predominant expression of Fam181a in mouse and human testes, implying that it may have essential roles in spermatogenesis. In this study we investigated the in vivo function of Fam181a in mouse spermatogenesis and fertility by generating Fam181a-/- mice using clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeat (CRISPR)/CRISPR-associated (Cas) 9 genome editing technology. The resulting Fam181a-/- mice exhibited normal growth and development. In addition, the mice were completely fertile, with no obvious differences in the testis-to-bodyweight ratio, epididymal sperm count or sperm motility compared with wild-type mice. Further examination of testicular and epididymal histology of Fam181a-/- mice found an intact seminiferous tubule structure and the presence of all types of germ cells, from spermatogonia to mature spermatozoa, similar to wild-type littermates. Similarly, analysis of meiotic prophase I progression revealed normal populations of each substage of prophase I in Fam181a þ/þ and Fam181a-/- testes, suggesting that this gene is dispensable for male fertility. These negative findings will help avoid research overlap, save time and resources and allow researchers to concentrate on genes that are critical for male fertility and spermatogenesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Low temperature (LT) often occurs at the seedling stage in the early rice-growing season, especially for direct seeded early-season indica rice, and using flooding irrigation can mitigate LT damage in rice seedlings. The molecular mechanism by which flooding mitigates the damage induced by LT stress has not been fully elucidated. Thus, LT stress at 8 °C, LT accompanied by flooding (LTF) and CK (control) treatments were established for 3 days to determine the transcriptomic, proteomic and physiological response in direct seeded rice seedlings at the seedling stage. Results: LT damaged chloroplasts, and thylakoid lamellae, and increased osmiophilic bodies and starch grains compared to CK, but LTF alleviated the damage to chloroplast structure caused by LT. The physiological characteristics of treated plants showed that compared with LT, LTF significantly increased the contents of rubisco, chlorophyll, PEPCK, ATP and GA3 but significantly decreased soluble protein, MDA and ABA contents. 4D-label-free quantitative proteomic profiling showed that photosynthesis-responsive proteins, such as phytochrome, as well as chlorophyll and the tricarboxylic acid cycle were significantly downregulated in LT/CK and LTF/CK comparison groups. However, compared with LT, phytochrome, chlorophyllide oxygenase activity and the glucan branching enzyme in LTF were significantly upregulated in rice leaves. Transcriptomic and proteomic studies identified 72,818 transcripts and 5639 proteins, and 4983 genes that were identified at both the transcriptome and proteome levels. Differentially expressed genes (DEGs) and differentially expressed proteins (DEPs) were significantly enriched in glycine, serine and threonine metabolism, biosynthesis of secondary metabolites, glycolysis/gluconeogenesis and metabolic pathways. Conclusion: Through transcriptomic, proteomic and physiological analyses, we determined that a variety of metabolic pathway changes were induced by LT and LTF. GO and KEGG enrichment analyses demonstrated that DEGs and DEPs were associated with photosynthesis pathways, antioxidant enzymes and energy metabolism pathway-related proteins. Our study provided new insights for efforts to reduce the damage to direct seeded rice caused by low-temperature stress and provided a breeding target for low temperature flooding-resistant cultivars. Further analysis of translational regulation and metabolites may help to elucidate the molecular mechanisms by which flooding mitigates low-temperature stress in direct seeded early indica rice at the seedling stage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sperm head shaping is a key event in spermiogenesis and is tightly controlled via the acrosome-manchette network. Linker of nucleoskeleton and cytoskeleton (LINC) complexes consist of Sad1 and UNC84 domain-containing (SUN) and Klarsicht/ANC-1/Syne-1 homology (KASH) domain proteins and form conserved nuclear envelope bridges implicated in transducing mechanical forces from the manchette to sculpt sperm nuclei into a hook-like shape. However, the role of LINC complexes in sperm head shaping is still poorly understood. Here we assessed the role of SUN3, a testis-specific LINC component harboring a conserved SUN domain, in spermiogenesis. We show that CRISPR/Cas9-generated Sun3 knockout male mice are infertile, displaying drastically reduced sperm counts and a globozoospermia-like phenotype, including a missing, mislocalized, or fragmented acrosome, as well as multiple defects in sperm flagella. Further examination revealed that the sperm head abnormalities are apparent at step 9 and that the sperm nuclei fail to elongate because of the absence of manchette microtubules and perinuclear rings. These observations indicate that Sun3 deletion likely impairs the ability of the LINC complex to transduce the cytoskeletal force to the nuclear envelope, required for sperm head elongation. We also found that SUN3 interacts with SUN4 in mouse testes and that the level of SUN4 proteins is drastically reduced in Sun3-null mice. Altogether, our results indicate that SUN3 is essential for sperm head shaping and male fertility, providing molecular clues regarding the underlying pathology of the globozoospermia-like phenotype. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the major somatic cell type, Sertoli cells undergo active proliferation and play essential roles to establish testis cord at fetal stage. They also function to maintain germ cell development throughout the life of testicular development. However, the significance of Sertoli cell number for testis cord development and gonocyte fate is still unclear. Nuclear protein ataxia-telangiectasia (NPAT, also known as p220), a substrate of cyclin E/cyclin-dependent kinase 2, is well known as a regulator of cell proliferation through regulating histone expression. To study the role of NPAT during Sertoli cell development, we generated a mouse strain carrying conditional floxed Npat alleles, when crossing with anti-Müllerian hormone-cre, leading to the specific deletion of Npat in Sertoli cells. Npat disruption in Sertoli cells inhibited the programmed proliferation of fetal Sertoli cells resulting in disruption of developing testis cords, and subsequent postnatal mutant testes were severely hypoplastic. Germ cells, which are presumed to be in quiescent status during perinatal stage, exited G0 phase arrest and re-enter mitotic cell cycle prematurely. Of particular note, some germ cells possessed the meiotic signal in Npat-deficient testes. Our data thus indicates that the function of Npat-dependent Sertoli cells is essential at multiple steps in testis development, and this study also identifies Sertoli cells as a major regulator of germ cell development, which are required to maintain a local growth niche to repress premature mitosis and meiosis of gonocytes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Proper oocyte development is crucial for female fertility and requires timely and accurate control of gene expression. K (lysine) acetyltransferase 8 (KAT8), an important component of the X chromosome dosage compensation system in Drosophila, regulates gene activity by acetylating histone H4 preferentially at lysine 16. To explore the function of KAT8 during mouse oocyte development, we crossed Kat8flox/flox mice with Gdf9-Cre mice to specifically delete Kat8 in oocytes. Oocyte Kat8 deletion resulted in female infertility, with follicle development failure in the secondary and preantral follicle stages. RNA-seq analysis revealed that Kat8 deficiency in oocytes results in significant downregulation of antioxidant genes, with a consequent increase in reactive oxygen species. Intraperitoneal injection of the antioxidant N-acetylcysteine rescued defective follicle and oocyte development resulting from Kat8 deficiency. Chromatin immunoprecipitation assays indicated that KAT8 regulates antioxidant gene expression by direct binding to promoter regions. Taken together, our findings demonstrate that KAT8 is essential for female fertility by regulating antioxidant gene expression and identify KAT8 as the first histone acetyltransferase with an essential function in oogenesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ztbt20 is a POK family transcription factor and primarily functions through its conserved C2H2 Krüppel type zinc finger and BTB/POZ domains. The present study was designed to define the function of the Zbtb20, in vivo, during mouse spermatogenesis. Immunohistochemical studies revealed that ZBTB20 protein was localized specifically in the nuclei of Sertoli cells in seminiferous tubules. To investigate its role during spermatogenesis, we crossed Amh-Cre transgenic mice with Zbtb20 floxp mice to generate conditionally knockout mice (cKO) in which Zbtb20 was specifically deleted in Sertoli cells. The cKO mice were fertile and did not show any detectable abnormalities in spermatogenesis. Taken together, though specific deletion of transcription factor Zbtb20 in Sertoli cells has no apparent influence on spermatogenesis, its specific localization in Sertoli cells makes Zbtb20 a useful marker for the identification of Sertoli cells in seminiferous tubules. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Primordial follicles, providing all the oocytes available to a female throughout her reproductive life, assemble in perinatal ovaries with individual oocytes surrounded by granulosa cells. In mammals including the mouse, most oocytes die by apoptosis during primordial follicle assembly, but factors that regulate oocyte death remain largely unknown. Proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA), a key regulator in many essential cellular processes, was shown to be differentially expressed during these processes in mouse ovaries using 2D-PAGE and MALDI-TOF/TOF methodology. A V-shaped expression pattern of PCNA in both oocytes and somatic cells was observed during the development of fetal and neonatal mouse ovaries, decreasing from 13.5 to 18.5 dpc and increasing from 18.5 dpc to 5 dpp. This was closely correlated with the meiotic prophase I progression from pre-leptotene to pachytene and from pachytene to diplotene when primordial follicles started to assemble. Inhibition of the increase of PCNA expression by RNA interference in cultured 18.5 dpc mouse ovaries strikingly reduced the apoptosis of oocytes, accompanied by down-regulation of known pro-apoptotic genes, e.g. Bax, caspase-3, and TNFα and TNFR2, and up-regulation of Bcl-2, a known anti-apoptotic gene. Moreover, reduced expression of PCNA was observed to significantly increase primordial follicle assembly, but these primordial follicles contained fewer guanulosa cells. Similar results were obtained after down-regulation by RNA interference of Ing1b, a PCNA-binding protein in the UV-induced apoptosis regulation. Thus, our results demonstrate that PCNA regulates primordial follicle assembly by promoting apoptosis of oocytes in fetal and neonatal mouse ovaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nucleophosmin/B23, an abundant nucleolar protein, plays multiple roles in cell growth and proliferation, and yet, little has been studied about its function in regulating dynamics of microtubules. Here, we report that B23 directly interacts with Eg5, a member of the kinesin family, in the cytosol. The DNA/RNA binding domain of B23 and the motor domain of Eg5 were found to be involved in their interaction. Both in vivo and in vitro evidences showed that B23 acts as an upstream regulator of Eg5 in promoting microtubule polymerization. Moreover, we further demonstrated that B23 regulates microtubule dynamics by directly inhibiting Eg5 ATPase activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]