Journal of Andrology
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Published-Ahead-of-Print June 6, 2007, DOI:10.2164/jandrol.107.002824

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Comparative analysis of inter-individual variations in the seminal plasma proteome of fertile men with the identification of potential markers for azoospermia in infertile patients

Katsunori Yamakawa *, Kaoru Yoshida , Hiroyuki Nishikawa , Tomohiro Kato , and Teruaki Iwamoto

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: katsu-2{at}cb3.so-net.ne.jp.

Seminal plasma is a potential source of biomarkers for many disorders of the male reproductive system. The identification and characterization of proteins in the seminal plasma by using two-dimensional (2-D) difference gel electrophoresis serve as a basis for estimating male infertility. However, individual variation remains an impediment in identifying disease-associated proteins. Therefore, it is necessary to examine the inter-individual variations in the seminal plasma proteome of fertile men. The present study analyzes seminal plasma samples from 10 fertile men. The results from silver-stained 2-D gel electrophoresis were averaged to reduce gel-to-gel variation. Up to 501 spots (polypeptides) were detected on the averaged gels in the case of the fertile men. The coefficient of variation (CV) of standardized abundance was calculated for 63 spots that were common to all 10 samples; the CV values ranged from 24.5% to 129.9% with a median value of 63.1%. These results demonstrate that the variability in protein expression among different fertile men is relatively high in seminal plasma when compared with that in other human tissue samples. The 63 matched spots were compared with those from 10 patients with azoospermia. There was no common spot that was lost in each of 10 patients, and 16 of these spots (25%) were present in each of the patients. We identified 4 and 1 candidate markers for nonobstructive and obstructive azoospermia, respectively. These results validate our method of identifying differences in the proteomic profiles of seminal plasma samples and provide an important basis for protein expression profiling and comparative proteomics of infertility.


Key words: Fertility • Semen • Sperm • Sperm retrieval • Spermatogenesis






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