Sperm with fibrous sheath dysplasia and anomalies in head-neck junction: focus on centriole and centrin 1

The centrosome acts as the main microtubule-nucleating organelle in animal cells and plays a critical role in mitotic spindle orientation and in genome stability. Yet, despite its central role in cell biology, the centrosome is not present in all multicellular organisms or in all cells of a given organism. The main outcome of centrosome reproduction is the transmission of polarity to daughter cells and, in most animal species, the sperm-donated centrosome defines embryo polarity. Here I will discuss the role of the centrosome in cell polarity, resulting from its ability to position the nucleus at the cell center, and discuss how centrosome innovation might have been critical during metazoan evolution.

Four subjects who produced immotile sperm were studied. In three of the subjects, who had frequent bronchitis and sinusitis, there was no mucociliary transport, as measured by tracheobronchial clearance. Electron microscopy indicated that cilia from cells of these patients lack dynein arms.

The fibrous sheath is a unique cytoskeletal structure surrounding the axoneme and outer dense fibers and defines the extent of the principal piece region of the sperm flagellum. It consists of two longitudinal columns connected by closely arrayed semicircular ribs that assemble from distal to proximal throughout spermiogenesis. The fibrous sheath is believed to influence the degree of flexibility, plane of flagellar motion, and the shape of the flagellar beat. Nearly half of the protein in fibrous sheaths isolated from mouse sperm is AKAP4. This protein and two others, AKAP3 and TAKAP-80, have anchoring sites for cAMP-dependent protein kinase. AKAP3 also anchors ropporin, a spermatogenic cell-specific protein that is linked through rhophilin to the small GTPase Rho. Other proteins associated with the fibrous sheath include two enzymes in the glycolytic pathway. Glyceraldehyde 3-phosphate dehydrogenase-s (GAPDS) is the product of a gene expressed only in spermatogenic cells, while hexokinase type 1-s (HK1-S) is derived from alternative transcripts present only in spermatogenic cells. Most of the other glycolytic enzymes in sperm have unique structural or functional properties. The fibrous sheath also contains a spermatogenic cell-specific member of the mu-class glutathione S-transferase family (GSTM5) and an intermediate filament-like protein (FS39). These and other observations indicate that the fibrous sheath functions as a scaffold for proteins in signaling pathways that might be involved in regulating sperm maturation, motility, capacitation, hyperactivation, and/or acrosome reaction and for enzymes in the glycolytic pathway that provide energy for the hyperactivated motility of sperm that allows them to penetrate the zona pellucida. Published 2003 Wiley-Liss, Inc.