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An abundance of X-linked genes expressed in spermatogonia

Nature Genetics volume 27, pages 422–426 (2001)Cite this article

Abstract

Spermatogonia are the self-renewing, mitotic germ cells of the testis from which sperm arise by means of the differentiation pathway known as spermatogenesis1. By contrast with hematopoietic and other mammalian stem-cell populations, which have been subjects of intense molecular genetic investigation, spermatogonia have remained largely unexplored at the molecular level. Here we describe a systematic search for genes expressed in mouse spermatogonia, but not in somatic tissues. We identified 25 genes (19 of which are novel) that are expressed in only male germ cells. Of the 25 genes, 3 are Y-linked and 10 are X-linked. If these genes had been distributed randomly in the genome, one would have expected zero to two of the genes to be X-linked. Our findings indicate that the X chromosome has a predominant role in pre-meiotic stages of mammalian spermatogenesis. We hypothesize that the X chromosome acquired this prominent role in male germ-cell development as it evolved from an ordinary, unspecialized autosome.

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Figure 1: Expression of 23 novel germ-cell-specific genes in mouse tissues assayed by RT–PCR.
Figure 2: Chromosomal locations of 36 spermatogonially expressed, germ-cell–specific genes in mouse.
Figure 3: Expression of orthologous human genes assayed by RT–PCR.

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Acknowledgements

We thank D. Menke for developing the subtraction protocol; H. Skaletsky for statistical advice and bioinformatics support; and A. Arango, D. Berry, A. Bortvin, D. Charlesworth, B. Charlesworth, A. Chess, A. Clark, C. Disteche, L. Goldmakher, D. Haig, M. Handel, R. Jaenisch, T. Kawaguchi, F. Lewitter, B. Lahn, A. Lin, D. Menke, T. Rasmussen, W. Rice, S. Rozen and S. Silber for comments on the manuscript. Supported by National Institutes of Health. P.J.W. was the recipient of a Lalor Foundation fellowship.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Whitehead Institute,

    P. Jeremy Wang, Fang Yang & David C. Page

  2. Department of Biology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA

    P. Jeremy Wang, Fang Yang & David C. Page

  3. Department of Genetics, Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research, San Antonio, Texas, USA

    John R. McCarrey

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  1. P. Jeremy Wang
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Correspondence to David C. Page.

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Wang, P., McCarrey, J., Yang, F. et al. An abundance of X-linked genes expressed in spermatogonia. Nat Genet 27, 422–426 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1038/86927

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