Jiang Xiao-Hua, Bukhari Ihtisham, Zheng Wei, Yin Shi, Wang Zheng, Cooke Howard J, Shi Qing-Hua
Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at Microscale, School of Life Sciences, University of Science and Technology of China; Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hefei, China, .
Asian J Androl. 2014 Jul-Aug;16(4):572-80. doi: 10.4103/1008-682X.125401.
The blood-testis barrier (BTB) is found between adjacent Sertoli cells in the testis where it creates a unique microenvironment for the development and maturation of meiotic and postmeiotic germ cells in seminiferous tubes. It is a compound proteinous structure, composed of several types of cell junctions including tight junctions (TJs), adhesion junctions and gap junctions (GJs). Some of the junctional proteins function as structural proteins of BTB and some have regulatory roles. The deletion or functional silencing of genes encoding these proteins may disrupt the BTB, which may cause immunological or other damages to meiotic and postmeiotic cells and ultimately lead to spermatogenic arrest and infertility. In this review, we will summarize the findings on the BTB structure and function from genetically-modified mouse models and discuss the future perspectives.
血睾屏障（BTB）存在于睾丸中相邻的支持细胞之间，它为生精小管中减数分裂和减数分裂后生殖细胞的发育和成熟创造了一个独特的微环境。它是一种复合蛋白质结构，由几种类型的细胞连接组成，包括紧密连接（TJ）、黏附连接和缝隙连接（GJ）。一些连接蛋白作为血睾屏障的结构蛋白发挥作用，而一些则具有调节作用。编码这些蛋白质的基因的缺失或功能沉默可能会破坏血睾屏障，这可能会对减数分裂和减数分裂后细胞造成免疫或其他损害，并最终导致生精停滞和不育。在这篇综述中，我们将总结转基因小鼠模型中关于血睾屏障结构和功能的研究结果，并讨论未来的研究方向。
