Perinatal and juvenile oral treatment of rats with the insecticide, methoxychlor (MXC), reduced testicular size and other reproductive indices including the number of epididymal spermatozoa in those animals as adults 161. The objective was to determine if these males exposed during development had fewer Sertoli cells which might explain these testicular effects. Rat dams were gavaged with MXC a...

BACKGROUND Phthalate exposure induces germ cell effects in the fetal rat testis. Although experimental models have shown that the human fetal testis is insensitive to the steroidogenic effects of phthalates, the effects on germ cells have been less explored. OBJECTIVES We sought to identify the effects of phthalate exposure on human fetal germ cells in a dynamic model and to establish whether...

Sertoli cells, the supportive cells in the seminiferous epithelium, orchestrate spermatogenesis by providing structural and nutritional support to germ cells. In the rat, physiological apoptosis occurs continuously to limit the size of the germ cell population to numbers that can be adequately supported. This form of germ cell death is exaggerated after testicular insults such as toxicant treat...

Intratesticular injections of glycerol have been shown to result in a marked and prolonged reduction of spermatogenesis, accompanied by increased permeability of the blood-testis barrier. Because the permeability of the blood-testis barrier is regulated by Sertoli cell tight junctions, and tight junction organization is regulated by the cytoskeleton, we undertook to examine the effects of glyce...

12 Article Chronology: 13 Received 30 August 2006 14 Revised version received 15 26 December 2006 16 Accepted 23 January 2007 7 The coxsackie and adenovirus receptor (CAR), a putative cell–cell adhesion molecule, has 8 attracted wide interest due to its importance in viral pathogenesis and in mediating 9 adenoviral gene delivery. However, the distribution pattern and physiological function of 2...

It is currently admitted that Follicle-Stimulating Hormone (FSH) is physiologically involved in the development and function of fetal/neonatal Sertoli cells in the rat but not the mouse. However, FSH is produced by both species from late fetal life onwards. We thus reinvestigated the role of FSH in mouse testis development at day 0 (birth) 6, 8 and 10 post-partum (dpp) by using mice that lack f...

Environmental toxicants have been shown to induce the epigenetic transgenerational inheritance of adult onset disease, including testis disease and male infertility. The current study was designed to determine the impact of an altered sperm epigenome on the subsequent development of an adult somatic cell (Sertoli cell) that influences the onset of a specific disease (male infertility). A gestat...

Receptor tyrosine kinases act to convey extracellular signals to intracellular signaling pathways and ultimately control cell proliferation and differentiation. Rse, Axl, and Mer belong to a newly identified family of cell adhesion molecule-related receptor tyrosine kinase. They bind the vitamin K-dependent protein growth arrest-specific gene 6 (Gas6), which is also structurally related to the ...

Rai14 (retinoic acid induced protein 14) is an actin binding protein first identified in the liver, highly expressed in the placenta, the testis, and the eye. In the course of studying actin binding proteins that regulate the organization of actin filament bundles in the ectoplasmic specialization (ES), a testis-specific actin-rich adherens junction (AJ) type, Rai14 was shown to be one of the r...

The potential role of transforming growth factor-alpha (TGF-alpha) as a mediator of cell-cell interactions in the growth and development of the testis was examined. Developing rat testes were collected, and preparations of mesenchymal-derived peritubular cells and epithelial-like Sertoli cells were isolated from prepubertal, midpubertal, and late pubertal rat testes. The developmental expressio...