2011 Fiscal Year Final Research Report
Structuresandfunctionsofthespermubiquitin-proteasomesystem involvedlnfertilizationandreproduction
| Project/Area Number |
21390019
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B)
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| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
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| Section | 一般 |
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| Research Field |
Biological pharmacy
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| Research Institution | Nagoya University |
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Principal Investigator |
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| Project Period (FY) |
2009 – 2011
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| Keywords | 受精 / ユビキチン / プロテアソーム / 精子 / 卵 / ホヤ |
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| Research Abstract |
We previously reported that the ubiquitin-proteasome system(UPS) plays a key extracellular role in fertilization, as an egg-coat lysin, which allows sperm to penetrate through the egg-coat in the ascidians H. roretziand C. intestinalis. However, the structural features and the sorting mechanism of the sperm UPS are not known. Here, we investigated the sperm-specific UPS using these ascidians. We found that a certain ubiquitin-conjugating enzyme(Ube2r) is specifically expressed in the testis of C. intestinalis and that the C-terminal 16 residues of theα6/PSMA1 subunit of the sperm 20S proteasome are specifically processed in H. roretzi. These findings enabled us to further investigate the possible involvement of the C-terminal processing of the proteasome in the sorting of the proteasome to an acrosome or outer surface of sperm head regions.
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