Background: Infertility is a complex medical problem. About 15% of couples are infertile, and male infertility being involved in roughly 50% of the cases. Among these, many cases are associated with a severe impairment of spermatogenesis. During the last stage of spermatogenesis (spermiogenesis), sperm chromatin endures complex modifications in which histones are lost and depositioned with tran...

background new research proposes the pluripotency of spermatogonial cells obtained from testis. these spermatogonia-derived stem cells are called embryonic stem-like cells that express embryonic stem cell markers and differentiate to the three germ layers. objectives the aim of the present study was to generate embryonic stem-like cells from neonatal mouse testis. materials and methods the test...

Cancer testis antigens (CTAs), a large family of tumor-associated and immunogenic antigens expressed in human tumors of various histological origins, are highly restricted to the testis and trophoblast. CTAs have been identified as potent targets for tumor-specific immunotherapeutic advances and have immensely lead to the development of different clinical trials of CTA-based vaccine therapy bec...

We have constructed cDNA microarrays from the human testis large insert cDNA library, containing 9216 genes, together with several housekeeping genes. The cDNA microarrays were used to identify gene expression differences between human fetal and adult testes. Of >8700 hybridized clones, 731 exhibited significant differential expression characteristics. About 7500 genes were identified when the ...

Cancer-testis (CT) Ags are attractive targets for immunotherapeutic strategies since they are aberrantly expressed in malignant cells and not, or in limited number, in somatic tissues, except germ cells. To identify novel CT genes in multiple myeloma, we used Affymetrix HG-U133 gene expression profiles of 5 testis, 64 primary multiple myeloma cells (MMC), and 24 normal tissue samples. A 5-filte...

In Drosophila, genes expressed in males tend to accumulate on autosomes and are underrepresented on the X chromosome. In particular, genes expressed in testis have been observed to frequently relocate from the X chromosome to the autosomes. The inactivation of X-linked genes during male meiosis (i.e., meiotic sex chromosome inactivation-MSCI) was first proposed to explain male sterility caused ...

Background: Experimental cryptorchidism is a common model for examining the expression and function of heat-induced spermatogenesis related genes in testis. In this study the expression of genes & proteins thatinvolved in programmed cell death after treatment of cryptorchidism was examined. Materials and Methods: To induce bilateral cryptorchid model immature mice were anesthetized and a small ...