1. A paternal protein facilitates sperm RNA delivery to regulate zygotic development.
- Author
-
Li, Dongdong, Huang, Shijing, Chai, Yongping, Zhao, Ruiqian, Gong, Jing, Zhang, Qiangfeng Cliff, Ou, Guangshuo, and Wen, Wenyu
- Abstract
Sperm contributes essential paternal factors, including the paternal genome, centrosome, and oocyte-activation signals, to sexual reproduction. However, it remains unresolved how sperm contributes its RNA molecules to regulate early embryonic development. Here, we show that the Caenorhabditis elegans paternal protein SPE-11 assembles into granules during meiotic divisions of spermatogenesis and later matures into a perinuclear structure where sperm RNAs localize. We reconstitute an SPE-11 liquid-phase scaffold in vitro and find that SPE-11 condensates incorporate the nematode RNA, which, in turn, promotes SPE-11 phase separation. Loss of SPE-11 does not affect sperm motility or fertilization but causes pleiotropic development defects in early embryos, and spe-11 mutant males reduce mRNA levels of genes crucial for an oocyte-to-embryo transition or embryonic development. These results reveal that SPE-11 undergoes phase separation and associates with sperm RNAs that are delivered to oocytes during fertilization, providing insights into how a paternal protein regulates early embryonic development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2023
- Full Text
- View/download PDF