Gene expression profiling of rat spermatogonia and Sertoli cells reveals signaling pathways from stem cells to niche and testicular cancer cells to surrounding stroma

BMC Genomics

Research Article

Philippe Tachini¹  Dominique Glauser²  Werner Schlegel²  Michelle Vigier³  Philippe Durand⁴  Yong Qiang Zhang⁵  Irmgard Irminger-Finger⁵  Stephan Ryser⁶ 

[1] EDEL Therapeutics, Lausanne, Switzerland;Fondation pour Recherches Médicales, Geneva, Switzerland;INSERM, UMR 418; INRA, UMR 1245, Debrousse Hospital, Lyon, France;INSERM, UMR 418; INRA, UMR 1245, Debrousse Hospital, Lyon, France;Institut de Génomique Fonctionnelle de Lyon, Université de Lyon, Université Lyon 1; CNRS; INRA; Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon, Lyon, France;Molecular Gynecology and Obstetrics Laboratory, Geneva University Hospitals, Geneva, Switzerland;Molecular Gynecology and Obstetrics Laboratory, Geneva University Hospitals, Geneva, Switzerland;Lausanne University Hospital, Lausanne, Switzerland;

关键词: Germ Cell;    Proliferative Cell Nuclear Antigen;    Sertoli Cell;    Seminiferous Tubule;    Testicular Cancer;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2164-12-29

 received in 2010-10-09, accepted in 2011-01-13,  发布年份 2011

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundStem cells and their niches are studied in many systems, but mammalian germ stem cells (GSC) and their niches are still poorly understood. In rat testis, spermatogonia and undifferentiated Sertoli cells proliferate before puberty, but at puberty most spermatogonia enter spermatogenesis, and Sertoli cells differentiate to support this program. Thus, pre-pubertal spermatogonia might possess GSC potential and pre-pubertal Sertoli cells niche functions. We hypothesized that the different stem cell pools at pre-puberty and maturity provide a model for the identification of stem cell and niche-specific genes. We compared the transcript profiles of spermatogonia and Sertoli cells from pre-pubertal and pubertal rats and examined how these related to genes expressed in testicular cancers, which might originate from inappropriate communication between GSCs and Sertoli cells.ResultsThe pre-pubertal spermatogonia-specific gene set comprised known stem cell and spermatogonial stem cell (SSC) markers. Similarly, the pre-pubertal Sertoli cell-specific gene set comprised known niche gene transcripts. A large fraction of these specifically enriched transcripts encoded trans-membrane, extra-cellular, and secreted proteins highlighting stem cell to niche communication. Comparing selective gene sets established in this study with published gene expression data of testicular cancers and their stroma, we identified sets expressed genes shared between testicular tumors and pre-pubertal spermatogonia, and tumor stroma and pre-pubertal Sertoli cells with statistic significance.ConclusionsOur data suggest that SSC and their niche specifically express complementary factors for cell communication and that the same factors might be implicated in the communication between tumor cells and their micro-enviroment in testicular cancer.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Ryser et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2011. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.