School of Life Sciences, Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology, Gwangju, 61005, Korea.
BMC Genomics. 2024 Aug 20;25(1):793. doi: 10.1186/s12864-024-10696-2.
Alcohol consumption is widely known to have detrimental effects on various organs and tissues. The effects of ethanol on male reproduction have been studied at the physiological and cellular levels, but no systematic study has examined the effects of ethanol on male reproduction-related gene expression.
We employed a model of chronic ethanol administration using the Lieber-DeCarli diet. Ethanol-fed mice showed normal testicular and epididymal integrity, and sperm morphology, but decreased sperm count. Total RNA sequencing analysis of testes from ethanol-fed mice showed that a small fraction (∼ 2%) of testicular genes were differentially expressed in ethanol-fed mice and that, of these genes, 28% were cell-type specific in the testis. Various in silico analyses were performed, and gene set enrichment analysis revealed that sperm tail structure-related genes, including forkhead box J1 (Foxj1), were down-regulated in testes of ethanol-fed mice. Consistent with this result, ethanol-fed mice exhibited decreased sperm motility.
This study provides the first comprehensive transcriptomic profiling of ethanol-induced changes in the mouse testis, and suggests gene expression profile changes as a potential mechanism underlying ethanol-mediated reproductive dysfunction, such as impaired sperm motility.
众所周知，饮酒对各种器官和组织都有不良影响。已经在生理和细胞水平上研究了乙醇对男性生殖的影响，但没有系统的研究检查乙醇对男性生殖相关基因表达的影响。
我们采用 Lieber-DeCarli 饮食进行慢性乙醇给药模型。乙醇喂养的小鼠表现出正常的睾丸和附睾完整性以及精子形态，但精子计数减少。来自乙醇喂养小鼠的睾丸的总 RNA 测序分析表明，一小部分（约 2%）睾丸基因在乙醇喂养的小鼠中表达差异，其中 28%的基因在睾丸中具有细胞类型特异性。进行了各种计算分析，基因集富集分析表明，与精子尾部结构相关的基因，包括叉头框 J1（Foxj1），在乙醇喂养的小鼠的睾丸中下调。与该结果一致，乙醇喂养的小鼠表现出精子运动能力下降。
本研究首次全面分析了乙醇诱导的小鼠睾丸变化的转录组谱，并提出了基因表达谱变化作为乙醇介导的生殖功能障碍（如精子运动能力受损）的潜在机制。
