P-195: Analysis of Expression Level of Tex11 Gene in Obstructive and Non-Obstructive Azoospermic Men Referred to Royan Institute

Background: About 15% of couples worldwide suffer from infertility problem that half of these cases are related to male infertility. Spermatogenesis is a cumulative process and thousands of genes are involved in it. Change in one of these genes or their products can cause male infertility. Tex11 is a germ cell specific gene that is located on the X chromosome (Xq13.1 region). This gene was identified at 2001 for the first time as a germ cell-specific gene with unknown function. Tex11 gene in mice and human is only expressed in testis. TEX11 promote formation of meiotic cross overs and it is essential for meiosis and male fertility and is involved in the initiation and maintenance of chromosome synapses in males. Materials and Methods: The samples retrieved from patients who underwent diagnostic testicular biopsy in Royan institute. 5 patients with obstructive azoospermia and normal spermatogenesis and 5 patients with nonobstructive azoospermia were recruited. Total RNA was extracted with Trizol reagent and cDNA was synthesized. Quantitative real-time RT-PCR for Tex11 was performed using Power SYBR Green kit. Results: After normalizing the relative amount of Tex11 transcript by the amount of GAPDH transcript in the same cDNA, it was shown that tissue samples from non-obstructive azoospermic patients had lower level of tex11 gene expression than obstructive azoospermic samples. Conclusion: As expression level of Tex11 gene is reduced in non-obstructive azoospermic men, we can conclude that Tex11 expression levels is essential for normal spermatogenesis and deficiency in this gene can cause spermatogenic failure and infertility in men.