This article is mentioned in:

Introduction

Increasing attention has been focused on the function and significance of mRNA in sperm in light of the role it serves in sperm development and maintenance (1,2). Thus, mRNAs that aid in detection of sperm abnormalities are potential biomarkers to evaluate the quality of sperm in the diagnosis and treatment of male infertility (3–5).

Teratozoospermia is a condition characterized by a large number of spermatozoa with abnormal morphology and is considered to be a factor that may result in male infertility (6). There are two manifestations of teratozoospermia: Monomorphic morphological defects and flagellum morphological defects (6,7). Previous studies have demonstrated that abnormal expression of mRNA is a primary cause of abnormal sperm morphology (6–9). Kang-Decker et al (8) reported that male mice with ArfGAP with FG repeats 1 depletion were infertile due to a lack of acrosome formation. Casein kinase 2 α 2 knock-out male mice were also infertile due to abnormal morphology of the spermatid nucleus (9). Sptrx-2, expressed exclusively in human testis, was reported to be associated with flagellar anomalies (10). Allegrucci et al (11) also reported specific epigenetic signatures of flagellar anomalies. However, the specific mechanism underlying male infertility remains to be elucidated, as it is a complex process involving a large number of genes (12).

The rapid development of high-throughput technologies, including microarrays and RNA-sequencing has resulted in successful profiling of RNA expression, which enhances understanding of various diseases and helps further exploration of their underlying molecular mechanisms (13). HM et al (14) detected the gene expression of crossbred cattle sperm by microarray assessment and identified 305 genes that were significantly and differentially expressed. Hu et al (15) profiled long non-coding (lnc)RNA expression in male mice germ cells and revealed that a variety of lncRNAs may regulate male reproduction by serving as competing-endogenous RNAs to modulate the function of germ cells.

Exome sequencing analysis of two brothers with azoospermia demonstrated that the deficiency of homozygous serine peptidase inhibitor, Kazal type 2 is a factor in the development of azoospermia (16). However, to the best of our knowledge, there are limited studies that have systematically analyzed the gene expression profiles in patients with teratozoospermia using integration bioinformatics analysis. The present study obtained a gene expression dataset for teratozoospermia from the Gene Expression Omnibus (4) and performed systemic bioinformatics analysis, including identification of differentially expression genes (DEGs), functional enrichment analysis, co-expression network analysis and identified several significantly and differentially expressed biomarkers for teratozoospermia. The results of the present study may be beneficial in understanding the mechanism underlying teratozoospermia.

Materials and methods

Microarray data

The microarray dataset GSE6872 was downloaded from the GEO website (ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/gds/) which was based on the GPL570 platform. This dataset was submitted by Platts et al (17) and included 13 semen samples, collected from healthy fertile males. A total of 8 semen samples were collected from infertile patients with teratozoospermia without any other abnormal semen parameters.

Data preprocessing

The present study imported original CEL data into R (version 3.2.4, http://www.r-project.org/) and used an Affy R-package (Bioconductor version 3.6) to correct data background and data normalization. The mas5calls method for AffyBatch returns an ExpressionSet by multi probes which correspond to specific genes.

Differentially expressed gene selection

DEGs were identified between 13 healthy semen and 8 infertile semen samples, using the limma package (version 3.6, http://bioinf.wehi.edu.au/limma). False discovery rate (FDR)-value <0.01 and |log2 fold change| >2 were selected as the cutoff values.

Functional annotation and pathway analysis of DEGs

The Database for Annotation, Visualization and Integrated Discovery (DAVID V6.8; http://david.ncifcrf.gov/) (18) was used to annotate and conclude gene lists or protein identifiers via comprehensive categorical data for Gene Ontology (GO) (19). In order to extensively evaluate connected pathways and biological processes associated with teratozoospermia, pathway enrichment analyses of DEGs were performed with the DAVID analysis system, with a threshold of P≤0.05.

Protein interaction network and module analyses

The STRING database (http://string-db.org) was used to construct a protein-protein interaction (19) network of upregulated and downregulated DEGs, with a cutoff score of >0.4. The significant modules from the constructed PPI network of downregulated DEGs were selected using the ClusterONE plugin of the Cytoscape software v3.6.1 (cytoscape.org/plugins.html) with P<0.01 considered to indicate a statistical significance.

Results

Analysis of DEGs

The expression profile data were pre-processed and then analyzed with the Affy package in R language. The whole gene expression was screened. Box plots following data standardization are presented in Fig. 1A and B. Median values in Fig. 1 are similar, which suggests a good degree of standardization. All RNA expression levels are presented in Fig. 2A. Hierarchical cluster analysis indicated that the 8 samples from patients with teratozoospermia and the 13 normal samples exhibited differing distributions. The results revealed that grouping was reasonable, and the data successfully underwent further analysis. Microarray data from the normal semen samples were compared with those from the teratozoospermia semen samples and a total of 2,392 DEGs were identified. There were 450 upregulated genes and 1,942 downregulated genes (Fig. 2B). The top 10 upregulated genes were heparan sulfate-glucosamine 3-sulfotransferase 3A1 (HS3ST3A1), XK related 4, armadillo-like helical domain containing 4, hydatidiform mole associated and imprinted (non-protein coding), WNT inhibitory factor 1, SLIT-ROBO Rho GTPase activating protein 2C, SLIT-ROBO Rho GTPase activating protein 2, DQ592442 (GenBank, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genbank/), monoacylglycerol O-acyltransferase 1 and LOC101928622. The most unregulated gene HS3ST3A1 is a component in heparan sulfate generation pathway that few studies reported to be associated with spermatogenesis (20,21). The top 10 downregulated genes were zona pellucida binding protein (ZPBP), pancreatic progenitor cell differentiation and proliferation factor, microseminoprotein β, TSSK6 activating cochaperone, prolactin induced protein, transcription elongation factor A like 4, ribosomal protein (16) S5, ribosomal protein L7a pseudogene 12, semenogelin 1 and semenogelin 2 (Table I). The protein produced from the most downregulated gene, ZPBP, is usually located in the acrosome of spermatozoa (22). Abnormal morphogenesis is a major performance if patient lace of ZPBP expression (22).

Figure 1. Box plots of data distribution in semen samples. The horizontal axis represents sample names and the vertical axis represents expression values. The first eight samples (left) are normal sperm samples. The reamining 13 samples are teratozoospermia samples. The black line in the box plot is the median of each data group and the data standardization degree may be inferred from its distribution. (A) Data prior to standardization. (B) Data following standardization.

Figure 2. Differential expression analysis. (A) Heat map presenting the expression pattern across different samples. The horizontal axis represents sample names. The first eight samples are normal sperm samples. The further 13 samples are teratozoospermia samples. The left vertical axis presented clusters of DEGs, and the top horizontal axis presents clusters of samples. Red represents upregulated genes and green represents downregulated genes. (B) Volcano plot of DEGs. The y-axis is logFC and the x-axis represents -log10 (adjusted P-value). The red dots represent the DEGs upregulated and the green dots represent the DEGs downregulated while the black dots represent genes that were not differentially expressed. DEGs, differentially expressed genes; FC, fold change.

Table I. Top 10 upregulated and downregulated DEGs.

Table I.

Top 10 upregulated and downregulated DEGs.

A, Upregulated DEGs
Gene	logFC	AveExpr	t	P-value	Adjusted P-value	B
HS3ST3A1	6.15829	6.264543	22.41724	1.07×10−16	1.78×10−13	28.22125
XKR4	6.108402	6.904738	38.15492	1.13×10−21	2.44×10−17	38.46529
C14orf37	6.089262	5.604961	29.23487	3.63×10−19	1.97×10−15	33.48849
HYMAI	5.891272	7.247713	16.23585	9.01×10−14	2.38×10−11	21.67427
WIF1	5.55279	5.831665	34.46781	1.03×10−20	1.11×10−16	36.61418
SRGAP2C	5.491472	6.150009	23.34658	4.51×10−17	8.89×10−14	29.03932
SRGAP2	5.182356	5.577265	26.86696	2.24×10−18	6.06×10−15	31.83706
DQ592442	5.070846	7.77992	19.09086	3.15×10−15	2.07×10−12	24.96463
MOGAT1	5.004399	5.407998	14.35237	1.10×10−12	1.71×10−10	19.18967
LOC101928622	4.938621	5.265134	25.09824	9.64×10−18	2.09×10−14	30.48735
B, downregulated degs
Gene	logFC	AveExpr	t	P-value	Adjusted P-value	B
ZPBP	−5.39989	9.272953	−13.465	3.91×10−12	4.71×10−10	17.91695
PPDPF	−5.48137	7.809478	−15.1896	3.50×10−13	7.22×10−11	20.32858
MSMB	−5.54533	8.057753	−11.4953	8.49×10−11	4.52×10−09	14.82184
TSACC	−5.62232	9.854213	−12.3248	2.22×10−11	1.74×10−09	16.17356
PIP	−5.63595	8.930515	−9.11178	6.10×10−09	1.17×10−07	10.49482
TCEAL4	−5.81103	7.351813	−13.5001	3.72×10−12	4.57×10−10	17.96871
RPS5	−5.83978	7.284755	−21.5724	2.41×10−16	3.71×10−13	27.44499
RPL7AL2	−6.12204	7.736477	−16.0315	1.17×10−13	3.01×10−11	21.41787
SEMG1	−6.1932	10.05513	−15.8135	1.54×10−13	3.67×10−11	21.14096
SEMG2	−6.69875	7.822177	−10.4268	5.32×10−10	1.81×10−08	12.96753

[i] DEGs, differentially expressed genes; FC, fold change; HS3ST3A1, heparan sulfate-glucosamine 3-sulfotransferase 3A1; XKR4, XK related 4; C14orf37, armadillo-like helical domain containing 4; HYMAI, hydatidiform mole associated and imprinted (non-protein coding); WIF1, WNT inhibitory factor 1; SRGAP2C, SLIT-ROBO Rho GTPase activating protein 2C; SRGAP2, SLIT-ROBO Rho GTPase activating protein 2; MOGAT1, monoacylglycerol O-acyltransferase 1; ZPBP, zona pellucida binding protein; PPDPF, pancreatic progenitor cell differentiation and proliferation factor; MSMB, microseminoprotein β; TSACC, TSSK6 activating cochaperone; PIP, prolactin induced protein; TCEAL4, transcription elongation factor A like 4; RPS5, ribosome protein S5; RPL7AL2, ribosomal protein L7a pseudogene 12; SEMG1, semenogelin 1; SEMG2, semenogelin 2; AveExpr, Average expression of this probe set in all samples; t, t-value in the T-test between two sets of Bayes adjusted; B, the logarithmic value of the standard deviation obtained by empirical Bayes.

Functional and pathway enrichment analysis

A total of 450 upregulated and 1,942 downregulated genes were uploaded to DAVID and GO analysis was conducted, with P≤0.05 used to determine statistical significance. The top 10 GO terms enriched by up and downregulated genes are presented in Table II. The upregulated genes were primarily enriched in ‘nervous system development’, ‘developmental processes’, ‘anatomical structural development’, ‘synapse’, ‘regulation of developmental processes’, ‘regulation of multicellular organismal development’, ‘synaptic membranes’, ‘positive regulation of developmental processes’, ‘regulation of multicellular organismal process’ and ‘postsynaptic membranes’. The top downregulated genes were primarily associated with ‘protein targeting to the endoplasmic reticulum’, ‘membrane-enclosed lumen’, ‘nuclear part’, ‘SRP-dependent co-translational protein targeting to the membrane’, ‘translational initiation’, ‘RNA binding’, ‘cytoplasm’, ‘macromolecular complex’, ‘intracellular organelle part’ and ‘organelle part’. The KEGG (http://www.genome.jp/kegg/) pathways of up and downregulated genes are presented in Table III. The upregulated genes were primarily enriched in ‘neuroactive ligand-receptor interaction’, ‘retrograde endocannabinoid signaling’, ‘morphine addiction’, ‘GABAergic synapses’, ‘nicotine addiction’, ‘Rap1 signaling’, ‘Ras signaling’, ‘PI3K-Akt signaling’, and ‘glutamatergic and cholinergic synapses’. Down-regulated genes were associated with ‘ribosomes’, ‘Huntington's disease’, ‘oxidative phosphorylation’, ‘Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases’, ‘proteasomes’, ‘non-alcoholic fatty liver disease’, ‘metabolic pathways’, ‘protein processing in the endoplasmic reticulum’ and ‘RNA transport’.

Table II. Gene Ontology terms enriched in the teratozoospermia-related module.

Table II.

Gene Ontology terms enriched in the teratozoospermia-related module.

A, Upregulated genes
ID	Term	Count	FDR
GO.0007399	Nervous system development	37	4.12×10−07
GO.0032502	Developmental process	60	3.97×10−07
GO.0048856	Anatomical structure development	56	3.52×10−07
GO.0098794	Postsynapse	16	3.04×10−07
GO.0050793	Regulation of developmental process	39	1.73×10−07
GO.2000026	Regulation of multicellular organismal development	34	6.97×10−08
GO.0097060	Synaptic membrane	15	6.89×10−08
GO.0051094	Positive regulation of developmental process	30	1.85×10−08
GO.0051239	Regulation of multicellular organismal process	44	1.85×10−08
GO.0045211	Postsynaptic membrane	16	4.26×10−10
B, Downregulated genes
ID	Term	Count	FDR
GO.0045047	Protein targeting to ER	62	1.05×10−37
GO.0031974	Membrane-enclosed lumen	497	3.44×10−38
GO.0044428	Nuclear part	456	3.40×10−38
GO.0006614	SRP-dependent cotranslational protein targeting to membrane	62	2.24×10−38
GO.0006413	Translational initiation	89	6.39×10−39
GO.0003723	RNA binding	262	8.87×10−40
GO.0005737	Cytoplasm	941	2.62×10−43
GO.0032991	Macromolecular complex	552	4.40×10−48
GO.0044446	Intracellular organelle part	807	1.03×10−54
GO.0044422	Organelle part	821	8.62×10−55

[i] FDR, false discovery rate; ER, endoplasmic reticulum; SRP, signal recognition particle.

Table III. KEGG pathways enriched in the teratozoospermia-related module.

Table III.

KEGG pathways enriched in the teratozoospermia-related module.

A, Up-regulated genes
Term	Count	FDR
Neuroactive ligand-receptor interaction	15	7.99×10−08
Retrograde endocannabinoid signaling	9	1.95×10−06
Morphine addiction	8	9.94×10−06
GABAergic synapse	7	8.70×10−05
Nicotine addiction	5	3.09×10−04
Rap1 signaling pathway	9	3.89×10−04
Ras signaling pathway	9	5.16×10−04
PI3K-Akt signaling pathway	11	5.16×10−04
Glutamatergic synapse	6	2.62×10−03
Cholinergic synapse	5	1.98×10−02
B, Down-regulated genes
Term	Count	FDR
Ribosome	63	1.12×10−34
Huntington s disease	56	8.43×10−19
Oxidative phosphorylation	46	3.97×10−18
Parkinson's disease	45	4.14×10−16
Alzheimer's disease	46	7.12×10−14
Proteasome	20	1.94×10−10
Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease	38	2.39×10−10
Metabolic pathways	147	2.17×10−09
Protein processing in endoplasmic reticulum	35	2.29×10−07
RNA transport	30	1.65×10−05

[i] KEGG, Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes; FDR, false discovery rate; GABA, γ-aminobutyric acid.

PPI network construction and module analysis

In order to extract PPI data, the present study uploaded 450 upregulated genes and 1,942 downregulated genes to the STRING website. Subsequently, the samples with PPI data >0.4 were selected to assemble PPI networks. The PPI networks of upregulated genes are displayed in Fig. 3A. The upregulated network was constructed with 134 nodes and 199 edges. The G protein subunit β 3 (GNB3; degree=20), G protein subunit α o1 (GNAO1; degree=16) and G protein subunit γ transducin 1 (GNGT1; degree=15), were hub nodes in this network, which had almost twice the degree compared with other nodes in the network. The downregulated PPI network was subsequently constructed. The most significant modules were selected, with 160 nodes and 1,024 edges, as presented in Fig. 3B. Ribosomal protein S3 (RPS3; degree=32), RPS5 (degree=30), RPS16 (degree=29), RPS6 (degree=25) and RPS23 (degree=24) were hub nodes in this network.

Figure 3. Network analysis of DEGs. (A) PPI network of upregulated DEGs obtained from the STRING database. Upregulated network was constructed with 134 nodes and 199 edges. (B) PPI network of downregulated DEGs obtained from the STRING database. The downregulated network was constructed with 160 nodes and 1,024 edges. DEGs, differentially expressed genes; PPI, protein-protein interaction.

Discussion

Over the last decade, the molecular mechanism underlying teratozoospermia has been of great research interest, with studies conducted in animal, human and cell models (6,7). With the development of high-throughput technology, an increased number of genes/proteins have been demonstrated to be associated with male infertility (23,24). However, a comprehensive understanding of how the biological processes at the molecular level are associated with the pathogenesis of teratozoospermia remains to be elucidated. Therefore, it is necessary to elucidate the latent pathogenesis of teratozoospermia at the systems biology level. The present study identified the disease module associated with teratozoospermia, systematically investigated the interaction of module genes through pathway and network analyses and PPI data, and constructed a comprehensive and systematic framework to trace relevant genes.

There are several upregulated module genes that were observed to be involved in the pathogenesis of teratozoospermia, including GNB3, GNAO1 and GNGT1, all of them belong to the G proteins family, also known as guanine nucleotide-binding proteins. It has been reported that G proteins are present in human spermatozoa, transmit various stimulation signals from outside the cell to its interior and are associated with propagation (25–27). The aforementioned studies indicate that G proteins serve a role in the maintenance of fertilization capacity in human and mouse sperm (28). The aforementioned three G protein genes have not yet been associated with teratozoospermia; however, other members of the same class have been demonstrated to be necessary during spermatogenesis. Decreased expression of G protein subunit α i2 (Gαi2) was detected in low-motility spermatozoa with midpieces that were bent on themselves (29). Similarly, the activation of Gαi2 may affect the volume of ejaculated spermatozoa (11). Defective expression of GNA13 was observed in macrocephalic and global nucleus spermatozoa (30). The axonemal-associated localization within the midpiece and principal piece of various mammalian mature spermatozoa indicates that the G protein α-subunit gustducin likely affects sperm motility via intracellular signal transduction (31).

A comparative study of epigenetic research between fertile and infertile boars indicated significantly increased DNA methylation levels in the GNAS complex locus of infertile boars (32). These data suggest that G proteins may be downregulated in abnormal spermatogenesis. However, the results of the present study suggested that one of the G protein clusters that have never been proposed to have a function during spermatogenesis was enriched. GNB3, GNAO1 and GNGT1 are upregulated in sperm of patients with teratozoospermia, which may indicate a more comprehensive function of the G protein during spermatogenesis.

In addition, various ribosomal genes, including RPS3, RPS5, RPS6, RPS16 and RPS23, were observed to be downregulated in abnormal sperm, in the present study. Prior to the present study, RPS3 had not been reported to be associated with spermatogenesis. A previous study suggested that RPS6 may regulate the viability of sertoli cells in blood-testis barrier dynamics in rats (33). Furthermore, it has also been reported that RPS6 levels are downregulated via the serine/threonine-protein kinase mTOR signaling pathway in rats with sperm defects (34).

The function of the RPS23 gene, which is reported to be expressed in bovine sperm, remains to be fully elucidated (35). A previous study demonstrated that the downregulation of RPS16 and RPS5 in infertile patients is purportedly associated with asthenozoospermia (36). The consistency between previous studies and the results of the present study suggest that the methods used in the present study were effective in the study of teratozoospermia.

In conclusion, the present study used a systems biology framework for a comprehensive and systematic biological function- and network-based analysis of teratozoospermia. By integrating the information from GO, KEGG pathway and pathway crosstalk, it was revealed that three upregulated genes and five downregulated genes are enriched in the teratozoospermia-associated module. This systematic and comprehensive investigation of the teratozoospermia-associated module genes may improve the understanding of the contribution of genetic factors and their interactions with the pathogenesis of teratozoospermia, and may aid in identification of potential biomarkers for further investigation.

Acknowledgements

Not applicable.

Funding

The present study was supported by the Family Planning Project, Shanghai Municipal Commission of 415 Health and Family Planning (grant no. 201440002); Youth Foundation of Shanghai Institute of Planned Parenthood Research; Youth Foundation of Shanghai municipal commission of health and family planning (grant no. 20164Y0267).

Availability of data and materials

All data generated or analyzed during this study are included in this published article.

Authors' contributions

TZ and CL conducted data acquisition and analysis, and drafted the manuscript. JW and ZN contributed to the analysis of the results and revised the manuscript critically for important intellectual content. JZ and FY made substantial contributions to the design of the present study and critically revised the manuscript for important intellectual content.

Ethics approval and consent to participate

Not applicable.

Consent for publication

Not applicable.

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

References