Endocrine Abstracts

Upon adhesion to the zona pellucida, mammalian sperm undergo regulated exocytosis of the acrosome. Despite the difference in size, some parallels can be drawn concerning the signal transduction processes controlling the sperm acrosome reaction and synaptic vesicle exocytosis. Since components of signal transduction pathways are often organized in multiprotein signalling complexes, attempts were made to identify scaffolding proteins expressed in the acrosomal region of mammalia...

The G protein subunit α-gustducin is generally accepted as a marker for chemosensitive cells. Since chemosensation is especially important for the navigation of sperm towards the egg, attempts were made to explore whether α-gustducin might also be expressed in spermatozoa. RT-PCR experiments revealed that a gustducin PCR specific RNA fragment with the predicted size could be amplified from total mouse and rat testis. To identify the testicular cell type in which &#94...