Retinoic Acid Receptor Alpha Is Essential in Postnatal Sertoli Cells but Not in Germ Cells

Cells

Sylvain Faisan¹  Muriel Klopfenstein²  Norbert B. Ghyselinck²  Diana Condrea²  Nadège Vernet²  Sirine Souali-Crespo²  Manuel Mark²  Betty Féret² 

[1] ICube (UMR 7357), Laboratoire des Sciences de l’Ingénieur, de l’Informatique et de l’Imagerie, UNISTRA, CNRS, 300 Boulevard Sébastien Brant, CEDEX, 67412 Illkirch, France;Institut de Génétique et de Biologie Moléculaire et Cellulaire (IGBMC), Département de Génétique Fonctionnelle et Cancer, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS, UMR7104), Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (INSERM U1258), Université de Strasbourg (UNISTRA), 1 rue Laurent Fries, CEDEX, 67404 Illkirch, France;

关键词: anti-RARA antibodies for IHC;    mouse;    retinoic acid;    Sertoli cell;    seminiferous epithelium;    Sox9-CreERT²;   

DOI  :  10.3390/cells11050891

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Retinoic acid signaling is indispensable for the completion of spermatogenesis. It is known that loss of retinoic acid nuclear receptor alpha (RARA) induces male sterility due to seminiferous epithelium degeneration. Initial genetic studies established that RARA acts in Sertoli cells, but a recent paper proposed that RARA is also instrumental in germ cells. In the present study, we have re-assessed the function of RARA in germ cells by genetically ablating the Rara gene in spermatogonia and their progenies using a cell-specific conditional mutagenesis approach. We show that loss of Rara in postnatal male germ cells does not alter the histology of the seminiferous epithelium. Furthermore, RARA-deficient germ cells differentiate normally and give rise to normal, living pups. This establishes that RARA plays no crucial role in germ cells. We also tested whether RARA is required in Sertoli cells during the fetal period or after birth. For this purpose, we deleted the Rara gene in Sertoli cells at postnatal day 15 (PN15), i.e., after the onset of the first spermatogenic wave. To do so, we used temporally controlled cell-specific mutagenesis. By comparing the testis phenotypes generated when Rara is lost either at PN15 or at embryonic day 13, we show that RARA exerts all of its functions in Sertoli cells not at the fetal stage but from puberty.

【 授权许可】

Unknown