Expression of a testis-specific member of the olfactory receptor gene family in human primordial germ cells
Expression of a testis-specific member of the olfactory receptor gene family in human primordial germ cells
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DOI：
10.1093/molehr/7.6.553
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发表时间：
2001-06-01
影响因子：
4
通讯作者：
Monk, M
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Goto, T;Salpekar, A;Monk, M
嗅觉受体是一种G蛋白偶联的跨膜受体，编码嗅觉受体的基因组成了一个约有1000个基因的大基因家族。在哺乳动物中，一个成员基因的子集在睾丸中特异性表达（而不是在嗅觉粘膜中），并且嗅觉受体蛋白已经在狗的细长精子细胞和成熟精子中被鉴定。嗅觉受体可能识别女性生殖道中存在的信号分子，并在精子向卵母细胞的趋化性中起作用。在先前的研究中，我们通过差异显示鉴定了10个对应于人原始生殖细胞（PGC）特异表达基因的cDNA序列，序列分析表明，这些序列之一似乎是嗅觉受体基因家族的成员。为了进一步研究这一点，我们使用相应于嗅觉受体蛋白保守氨基酸序列的简并寡核苷酸引物扩增了所有在PGC中表达的嗅觉受体基因，对总共30个克隆序列的序列分析显示，一个成员基因也在我们的PGC中优先表达，该成员基因先前是从人睾丸cDNA文库中分离的，我们的研究结果表明，嗅觉受体基因家族的特定成员可能有生殖细胞在其生命周期的迁移阶段的功能。
Olfactory receptors are G protein-coupled transmembrane receptors, Genes encoding olfactory receptors constitute a large gene family of similar to 1000 total member genes. In mammals, a subset of member genes is specifically expressed in the testis (and not in the olfactory mucosa) and olfactory receptor proteins have been identified in elongated spermatids and mature spermatozoa of dogs. It is postulated that olfactory receptors may recognize signal molecules present in the female genital tract and play a role in chemotaxis of spermatozoa towards the oocyte, In a previous study, we identified 10 cDNA sequences, corresponding to genes specifically expressed in human primordial germ cells (PGC), by differential display, Sequence analysis revealed that one of these sequences appeared to be a member of the olfactory receptor gene family. To investigate this further, we have used degenerate oligonucleotide primers corresponding to conserved amino acid sequences of olfactory receptor proteins to amplify all the olfactory receptor genes expressed in the PGC, Sequence analysis of a total of 30 cloned sequences disclosed that one member gene, which was previously isolated from a human testis cDNA library by others, was also preferentially expressed in our PGC, Our results suggest that specific members of the olfactory receptor gene family may have a function in germ cells in the migratory phase of their life cycle.