ASB9 promotes ubiquitin-mediated degradation of TNP2 to facilitate histone-to-protamine transition in humans and mice
Ontology highlight
ABSTRACT:
ORGANISM(S): Mus Musculus
SUBMITTER: 
Ying Shen
PROVIDER: PXD070974 | iProX | Wed Nov 19 00:00:00 GMT 2025
REPOSITORIES: iProX
Similar Datasets
Project description:During spermiogenesis, nuclear remodeling occurs where histones are initially replaced by transition proteins (TNPs) and subsequently by protamines, a process essential for sperm maturation. Although the degradation of histones and TNPs is thought to be essential for sperm nuclear remodeling, the underlying mechanisms, particularly those governing TNP degradation, remain poorly understood. In this study, we investigated the role of the ankyrin repeat-containing SOCS box protein 9 (ASB9) during spermiogenesis and found that its deficiency causes TNP2 retention, leading to a failure of the histone-to-protamine transition in both humans and mice. This disruption consequently causes male infertility, characterized by sperm head malformation and impairments in fertilization and early embryonic development. Mechanistically, we found that ASB9 assembles a testis-specific Cullin-RING ligase (CRL) complex—TNP2–ASB9–ELOB/C–CUL5–RBX1—that mediates the ubiquitin-dependent degradation of TNP2 to facilitate the histone-to-protamine transition during spermiogenesis. Thus, our study is the first to uncover the mechanism underlying TNP2 degradation and highlights the critical role of ASB9 in male fertility through the CRL complex-mediated ubiquitination pathway, thereby expanding the fundamental understanding of nuclear remodeling during spermiogenesis.
2025-11-11 | PXD070610 |
Project description:Unique chromatin remodeling factors orchestrate dramatic changes in nuclear morphology during differentiation of the mature sperm head. A critical step in this process is histone-to-protamine exchange, which must be executed correctly to avoid sperm DNA damage, embryonic lethality, and male sterility. Here, we define an essential role for the histone methyltransferase DOT1L in the histone-to-protamine transition. We show that DOT1L is abundantly expressed in meiotic and postmeiotic germ cells and that methylation of histone H3 lysine 79 (H3K79), the modification catalyzed by DOT1L, is enriched in developing spermatids in the initial stages of histone replacement. Elongating spermatids lacking DOT1L fail to fully replace histones and exhibit aberrant protamine recruitment, resulting in deformed sperm heads and male sterility. Loss of DOT1L results in transcriptional dysregulation coinciding with the onset of histone replacement and affecting genes required for histone-to-protamine exchange. DOT1L also deposits H3K79me2 and promotes accumulation of elongating RNA Polymerase II at the testis-specific bromodomain gene Brdt. Together, our results indicate that DOT1L is an important mediator of transcription during spermatid differentiation and an indispensable regulator of male fertility.
2023-03-22 | GSE217931 | GEO
Project description:Families with sequence similarity 170 members A (Fam170a) deficiency caused abnormal sperm nuclear morphology and male infertility in mice, mirroring the observation of very low Fam170a transcription in sperm of infertile men with teratozoospermia.Fam170a directly interacted with the deubiquitinating enzyme Usp7 and promoted nuclear translocation of Usp7 in elongating sperm by its nuclear localization sequence, enhancing the deubiquitinating activity of Usp7 on testis-specific histone H2A and H2B variants. Collectively, our findings identified Fam170a as a previously unknown key regulator for sperm chromatin remodeling and revealed that histone deubiquitinating modification might also exert an essential role in the histone-to-protamine exchange.
2024-11-10 | PXD057721 |
Project description:Spermatozoa have a unique genome organization: their chromatin is almost completely devoid of histones and is formed instead of protamines which confer a high level of compaction and preserve paternal genome integrity until fertilization. Histone-to-protamine transition takes place in spermatids and is indispensable for the production of functional sperm. Here we show that the H3K79-methyltransferase DOT1L controls spermatid chromatin remodelling and subsequent reorganization and compaction of spermatozoon genome. Using a mouse model in which Dot1l is knocked-out (KO) in postnatal male germ cells, we found that Dot1l-KO sperm chromatin is less compact and has an abnormal content, characterized by the presence of transition proteins, immature protamine 2 forms and a higher level of histones. Proteomics and transcriptomics analyses performed on spermatids reveal that Dot1l-KO modifies the chromatin prior to histone removal, and leads to the deregulation of genes involved in flagellum formation and apoptosis during spermatid differentiation. As a consequence of these chromatin and gene expression defects, Dot1l-KO spermatozoa have less compact heads and are less motile, which results in impaired fertility.
2023-03-30 | PXD030734 | Pride
Project description:Idiopathic fertility disorders are associated with mutations in various genes. Here, we report that coiled-coil glutamate-rich protein 1 (CCER1), a germline-specific and intrinsically disordered protein (IDP), mediates post-meiotic sperm differentiation, while CCER1 deficiency results in defective sperm chromatin compaction and infertility in mice. CCER1 increases transition protein (Tnp1/2) and protamine (Prm1/2) transcription and serves as a multifaceted mediator for multiple epigenetic modification events of histones during the histone to protamine transition (HTP). Immiscible with heterochromatin in the nucleus, CCER1 self-assembles into polymer droplet and acts as a liquid-liquid phase separated condensate in the nucleus. Notably, we identified the loss-of function variants of human CCER1 (hCCER1) in five patients with non-obstuctive azoospermia (NOA) while absent in 2,713 fertile controls. The mutants led to premature termination or frameshift of CCER1 translation and disrupted condensates in vitro. In conclusion, we propose that nuclear CCER1 is a novel phase-separated condensate that links histone epigenetic modifications, sperm HTP transitions, chromatin condensation, and male fertility.
2023-09-29 | GSE212733 | GEO
Project description:To achieve the extreme nuclear condensation necessary for sperm function, most histones are replaced with protamines during spermiogenesis in mammals. Mature sperm retain only a small fraction of nucleosomes, which are, in part, enriched on gene regulatory sequences, and recent findings suggest that these retained histones provide epigenetic information that regulates expression of a subset of genes involved in embryo development after fertilization. We addressed this tantalizing hypothesis by analyzing two mouse models exhibiting abnormal histone positioning in mature sperm due to impaired poly(ADP-ribose) (PAR) metabolism during spermiogenesis and identified altered sperm histone retention in specific gene loci genome-wide using MNase digestion-based enrichment of mononucleosomal DNA. We then set out to determine the extent to which expression of these genes was altered in embryos generated with these sperm. For control sperm, most genes showed some degree of histone association, unexpectedly suggesting that histone retention in sperm genes is not an all-or-none phenomenon and that a small number of histones may remain associated with genes throughout the genome. The amount of retained histones, however, was altered in many loci when PAR metabolism was impaired. To ascertain whether sperm histone association and embryonic gene expression are linked, the transcriptome of individual 2-cell embryos derived from such sperm was determined using microarrays and RNA sequencing. Strikingly, a moderate but statistically significant portion of the genes that were differentially expressed in these embryos also showed different histone retention in the corresponding gene loci in sperm of their fathers. These findings provide new evidence for the existence of a linkage between sperm histone retention and gene expression in the embryo. Mnase sensitivity of sperm DNA, indicating nucleosomal, not protamine, packaging was altered in mice by manipulating poly(ADP-ribose) metabolism in adult males using a specific PARP inhibitor for 6 weeks. Abnormal sperm nucleosomal organization of males analyzed by these tiling arrays was compared with differential gene expression in 2 cell embryos fathered by these males analyzed by separate gene expression arrays and RNA sequencing.
2014-08-30 | E-GEOD-56282 | biostudies-arrayexpress
Project description:To achieve the extreme nuclear condensation necessary for sperm function, most histones are replaced with protamines during spermiogenesis in mammals. Mature sperm retain only a small fraction of nucleosomes, which are, in part, enriched on gene regulatory sequences, and recent findings suggest that these retained histones provide epigenetic information that regulates expression of a subset of genes involved in embryo development after fertilization. We addressed this tantalizing hypothesis by analyzing two mouse models exhibiting abnormal histone positioning in mature sperm due to impaired poly(ADP-ribose) (PAR) metabolism during spermiogenesis and identified altered sperm histone retention in specific gene loci genome-wide using MNase digestion-based enrichment of mononucleosomal DNA. We then set out to determine the extent to which expression of these genes was altered in embryos generated with these sperm. For control sperm, most genes showed some degree of histone association, unexpectedly suggesting that histone retention in sperm genes is not an all-or-none phenomenon and that a small number of histones may remain associated with genes throughout the genome. The amount of retained histones, however, was altered in many loci when PAR metabolism was impaired. To ascertain whether sperm histone association and embryonic gene expression are linked, the transcriptome of individual 2-cell embryos derived from such sperm was determined using microarrays and RNA sequencing. Strikingly, a moderate but statistically significant portion of the genes that were differentially expressed in these embryos also showed different histone retention in the corresponding gene loci in sperm of their fathers. These findings provide new evidence for the existence of a linkage between sperm histone retention and gene expression in the embryo. Mnase sensitivity of sperm DNA, indicating nucleosomal, not protamine, packaging was altered in mice by manipulating poly(ADP-ribose) metabolism in adult males using Parg gene disruption (Parg(110)-/-). Abnormal sperm nucleosomal organization of males analyzed by these tiling arrays was compared with differential gene expression in individual 2 cell embryos fathered by these males analyzed in separate expression microarrays.
2014-08-30 | E-GEOD-56281 | biostudies-arrayexpress
Project description:To achieve the extreme nuclear condensation necessary for sperm function, most histones are replaced with protamines during spermiogenesis in mammals. Mature sperm retain only a small fraction of nucleosomes, which are, in part, enriched on gene regulatory sequences, and recent findings suggest that these retained histones provide epigenetic information that regulates expression of a subset of genes involved in embryo development after fertilization. We addressed this tantalizing hypothesis by analyzing two mouse models exhibiting abnormal histone positioning in mature sperm due to impaired poly(ADP-ribose) (PAR) metabolism during spermiogenesis and identified altered sperm histone retention in specific gene loci genome-wide using MNase digestion-based enrichment of mononucleosomal DNA. We then set out to determine the extent to which expression of these genes was altered in embryos generated with these sperm. For control sperm, most genes showed some degree of histone association, unexpectedly suggesting that histone retention in sperm genes is not an all-or-none phenomenon and that a small number of histones may remain associated with genes throughout the genome. The amount of retained histones, however, was altered in many loci when PAR metabolism was impaired. To ascertain whether sperm histone association and embryonic gene expression are linked, the transcriptome of individual 2-cell embryos derived from such sperm was determined using microarrays and RNA sequencing. Strikingly, a moderate but statistically significant portion of the genes that were differentially expressed in these embryos also showed different histone retention in the corresponding gene loci in sperm of their fathers. These findings provide new evidence for the existence of a linkage between sperm histone retention and gene expression in the embryo. 9 WT samples in 3 groups of 3. Each group consists of 3 eggs fertilized by the same father. 9 KO samples in the same setup. Samples are single 2-cell embryos. All mice are in a 129SVE (=129S6/SvEvTac, Taconic) background.
2014-08-30 | E-GEOD-56184 | biostudies-arrayexpress
Project description:This model is described in the article:
Kinetics of histone gene expression during early development of Xenopus laevis.
Koster JG, Destrée OH and Westerhoff HV. J Theor Biol.
1988 Nov 21;135(2):139-67. PMID: 3267765
Abstract:
Using literature data for transcriptional and translational rate constants, gene copy numbers, DNA concentrations, and stability constants, we have calculated the expected concentrations of histones and histone mRNA during embryogenesis of Xenopus laevis. The results led us to conclude that: (i) for X. laevis the gene copy number of the histone genes is too low to ensure the synthesis of sufficient histones during very early development, inheritance from the oocyte of either histone protein or histone mRNA (but not necessarily both) is necessary; (ii) from the known storage of histones in the oocyte and the rates of histone synthesis determined by Adamson and Woodland (1977), there would be sufficient histones to structure the newly synthesized DNA up to gastrulation but not thereafter (these empirical rates of histone synthesis may be underestimates); (iii) on the other hand, the amount of H3 mRNA recently observed during early embryogenesis (Koster, 1987, Koster et al., 1988) could direct a higher and sufficient synthesis of H3 protein, also after gastrulation. We present a quantitative model that accounts both for the observed H3 mRNA concentration as a function of time during embryogenesis and for the synthesis of sufficient histones to structure the DNA throughout early embryogenesis. The model suggests that X. laevis exhibits a major (i.e. some 14-fold) reduction in transcription of histone genes approximately 11 hours after fertilization. This reduction could be due to a decrease in the number of transcribed histone genes, a decreased rate constant of transcription with continued transcription of all the histone genes, and/or a reduction in the time during the cell cycle in which histone mRNA synthesis takes place. Alternatively, the histone mRNA stability might decrease approximately 16-fold 11 hours after fertilization.
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2005-01-01 | MODEL5954483266 | BioModels
Project description:Protamines are unique sperm-specific proteins that package and protect paternal chromatin until fertilization. A subset of mammalian species expresses two protamines (PRM1 and PRM2), while in others PRM1 is sufficient for sperm chromatin packaging. Alterations of the species-specific ratio between PRM1 and PRM2 are associated with infertility. Unlike PRM1, PRM2 is generated as a precursor protein consisting of a highly conserved N-terminal domain, termed cleaved PRM2 (cP2), which is consecutively trimmed off during chromatin condensation. The carboxyterminal part, called mature PRM2 (mP2), interacts with DNA and together with PRM1, mediates chromatin-hypercondensation. The removal of the cP2 domain is believed to be imperative for proper chromatin condensation, yet, the role of cP2 is not yet understood. We generated mice lacking the cP2 domain while the mP2 is still expressed. We show that the cP2 domain is indispensable for complete sperm chromatin protamination and male mouse fertility. cP2 deficient sperm show incomplete PRM2 incorporation, resulting in a severely altered protamine ratio, retention of transition proteins and aberrant retention of the testis specific histone variant H2A.L.2. During epididymal transit, cP2 deficient sperm seem to undergo ROS mediated degradation leading to complete DNA fragmentation. The cP2 domain therefore seems to be a key aspect in the complex crosstalk between histones, transition proteins and protamines during sperm chromatin condensation. Overall, we present the first step towards understanding the role of the cP2 domain in paternal chromatin packaging and open up avenues for further research.
2022-04-06 | GSE200052 | GEO