- Title
- Testicular heat stress, a historical perspective and two postulates for why male germ cells are heat sensitive
- Creator
- Robinson, Benjamin R.; Netherton, Jacob K.; Ogle, Rachel A.; Baker, Mark A.
- Relation
- Biological Reviews Vol. 98, Issue 2, p. 603-622
- Publisher Link
- http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/brv.12921
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2023
- Description
- Herein, we compare the different experimental regimes used to induce testicular heat stress and summarise their impact on sperm production and male fertility. Irrespective of the protocol used, scrotal heat stress causes loss of sperm production. This is first seen 1–2 weeks post heat stress, peaking 4–5 weeks thereafter. The higher the temperature, or the longer the duration of heat, the more pronounced germ cell loss becomes, within extreme cases this leads to azoospermia. The second, and often underappreciated impact of testicular hyperthermia is the production of poor-quality spermatozoa. Typically, those cells that survive hyperthermia develop into morphologically abnormal and poorly motile spermatozoa. While both apoptotic and non-apoptotic pathways are known to contribute to hyperthermic germ cell loss, the mechanisms leading to formation of poor-quality sperm remain unclear. Mechanistically, it is unlikely that testicular hyperthermia affects messenger RNA (mRNA) abundance, as a comparison of four different mammalian studies shows no consistent single gene changes. Using available evidence, we propose two novel models to explain how testicular hyperthermia impairs sperm formation. Our first model suggests aberrant alternative splicing, while the second model proposes a loss of RNA repression. Importantly, neither model requires consistent changes in RNA species.
- Subject
- testicular heat stress; genetic changes; proteomic changes; mRNA; alternative splicing
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1480597
- Identifier
- uon:50539
- Identifier
- ISSN:1464-7931
- Rights
- © 2022 The Authors.Biological Reviewspublished by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Cambridge Philosophical Society.This is an open access article under the terms of theCreative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivsLicense, which permits use and distribution inany medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.
- Language
- eng
- Full Text
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