An in vitro, short-term culture method for mammalian haploid round spermatids amenable for molecular manipulation.

Extensive chromatin remodeling is a characteristic feature of mammalian spermiogenesis. To date, methods for the molecular manipulation of haploid spermatids are not available as there is a lack of a well-established culture system. Biochemical experiments and knockout studies reveal only the final outcome; studying the incremental details of the intricate mechanisms involved is still a challenge. We have established an in vitro culture system for pure haploid round spermatids isolated from rat testes that can be maintained with good viability for up to 72 hr. Changes in cell morphology and flagellar growth were also studied in the cultured spermatids. Further, we have demonstrated that upon treatment of cells with specific histone deacetylase inhibitors, sodium butyrate and trichostatin A, there is an increase in the hyperacetylation status of histone H4, mimicking an important event characteristic of histone replacement process that occurs during later stages of spermiogenesis. We have also tried various methods for introducing DNA and protein into these round spermatids in culture, and report that while DNA transfection is still a challenging task, protein transfection could be achieved using Chariot™ peptide as a transfection reagent. Thus, the method described here sets a stage to study the molecular roles of spermatid-specific proteins and chromatin remodelers in the cellular context.

An integrated approach for measuring copy number variation at the FCGR3 (CD16) locus.

Copy number variation (CNV) is an important source of genomic diversity in humans, and influences disease susceptibility. The immunoglobulin-receptor genes FCGR3A and FCGR3B on chromosome 1q23.3 show CNV, and CNV of the FCGR3B gene is associated with glomerulonephritis in systemic lupus erythematosus and organ-specific autoimmunity. Large-scale case-control association studies of CNV require technologies that are amenable to high-throughput analysis with low error rates. Here we propose an integrated suite of five assays, four of them duplexed to reduce DNA usage, that assays for CNV at FCGR3A and FCGR3B, and genotype the polymorphic neutrophil antigen HNA1. We show how a maximum-likelihood (ML) approach to combining the results from these five assays allows estimation of statistical confidence for each individual copy number, and therefore an appropriate significance threshold to be set, controlling the error rate. This approach results in a high-throughput copy number genotyping system, with demonstrable precision and accuracy, that can be applied to large case-control cohort studies. We demonstrate Mendelian inheritance of this CNV, variation in frequency between Europeans and East Asians, and a lack of strong association between the CNV and flanking SNP genotypes, with important consequences for genome-wide association studies.