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We have developed a method that effectively removes all of the perinuclear materials of a mouse sperm head, including the acrosome, plasma membrane, perinuclear theca, and nuclear envelope. By injection of a single purified sperm head into a metaphase II mouse oocyte followed by activation with strontium chloride, 93% of the zygotes developed into two-cell embryos. Although only approximately 17% of the transferred two-cell embryos were born alive, all live pups developed into adults, and they appeared to be normal in reproduction and behavior. We detected RNA species, including mRNAs and miRNAs from the purified sperm heads. Our data demonstrate that pure membrane-free sperm heads are sufficient to produce normal offspring through intracytoplasmic sperm injection and that at least part of the RNA molecules are deeply embedded in the sperm nucleus.

It is believed that depending on the thermodynamic stability of the 5′-strand and the 3′-strand in the stem-loop structure of a precursor microRNA (pre-miRNA), cells preferentially select the less stable one (called the miRNA or guide strand) and destroy the other one (called the miRNA* or passenger strand). However, our expression profiling analyses revealed that both strands could be co-accumulated as miRNA pairs in some tissues while being subjected to strand selection in other tissues. Our target prediction and validation assays demonstrated that both strands of a miRNA pair could target equal numbers of genes and that both were able to suppress the expression of their target genes. Our finding not only suggests that the numbers of miRNAs and their targets are much greater than what we previously thought, but also implies that novel mechanisms are involved in the tissue-dependent miRNA biogenesis and target selection process.

Catsper3 and Catsper4 are two recently identified testis-specific genes homologous to Catsper1 and Catsper2 that have been shown to play an essential role in sperm hyperactivated motility and male fertility in mice. Here we report that Catsper3 and Catsper4 knockout male mice are completely infertile due to a quick loss of motility and a lack of hyperactivated motility under capacitating conditions. Our data demonstrate that both CATSPER3 and CATSPER4 are required for hyperactivated sperm motility during capacitation and for male fertility. The present study also demands a revisit to the idiopathic male infertility patients who show normal sperm counts and normal initial motility for defects in sperm hyperactivated motility and for potential CATSPER gene mutations. The CATSPER channel also may be an excellent drug target for male contraceptives.

Mammalian genomes encode a large number of small noncoding RNAs (sncRNAs) that play regulatory roles during development and adulthood by affecting gene expression. Several sncRNA species, including microRNAs (miRNAs), piwi-interacting RNAs (piRNAs), endogenous small interfering RNAs (endo-siRNAs), and small nucleolar RNAs (snoRNAs), are abundantly expressed in the testis and required for normal testicular development and spermatogenesis. To evaluate global changes in sncRNA expression, the next-generation sequencing (NGS)-based sncRNA transcriptomic analysis has become routine, because it allows rapid determination of the small RNA transcriptome of a particular testicular cell type. However, annotation of small RNA NGS reads can be challenging due to the volume of reads obtained, which is usually in the millions. Therefore, we developed a computer-assisted sncRNA annotation protocol that could identify not only known sncRNAs but also previously uncharacterized ones. Using this protocol, we annotated NGS reads of a Sertoli cell sncRNA library, and we report to our knowledge the first comprehensive annotation of the sncRNA transcriptome of immature murine Sertoli cells. Moreover, the computer-assisted sncRNA annotation pipeline that we report is applicable for annotating NGS reads derived from other cell types and/or sequencing platforms.