Polyamines modulate mouse sperm motility

Abstract

Polyamines are polycationic molecules which contains two or more amino groups (-NH₃⁺) highly charged at physiological pH, and among them we found spermine, spermidine, putrescine, and cadaverine. They interact with proteins, nucleic acids, modulate Ca²⁺, K⁺, and Na⁺ channels, and protect sperm from oxidative stress. In this work, we evaluate the effect of spermine, spermidine, and putrescine on the total, progressive and kinematic parameters of motility, capacitation, acrosome reaction, also in presence and absence of the dbcAMP, an analogue of the cAMP, and the IBMX, a phosphodiesterase inhibitor. In addition, we evaluated the intracellular concentrations of cAMP [cAMP]i, and performed an in silico analysis between polyamines and the sAC from mouse to predict the possible interaction among them. Our results showed that all polyamines decrease drastically the total, progressive and the kinetic parameters of sperm motility, decrease the capacitation, and only spermidine and putrescine impeded the acquisition of acrosome reaction. Moreover, the effect of polyamines was attenuated but not countered by the addition of db-cAMP and IBMX, suggesting a possible inhibition of the sAC. Also, the presence of polyamines induced a decrease of the [cAMP]i, and the in silico analysis predicted a strong interaction among polyamines and the sAC. Overall, the evidence suggests that probably the polyamines interact and inhibit the activity of the sAC.

Keywords:

• Spermatozoa
• motility
• soluble adenylyl cyclase
• capacitation
• acrosome reaction

Ethics approval

The investigation and animal protocols were approved by The Institutional Ethics Committee of Escuela Nacional de Ciencias Biológicas of the Instituto Politécnico Nacional (protocol no. 902144 in January the 7th of 2014) in accordance with the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals, published by the National Institutes of Health (Bethesda, MD, USA).

Acknowledgments

The authors express their gratitude to MVZ Mónica Vargas Lascari for the handling of the experimental animals to carry out this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Authors’ contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments, wrote the manuscript: JCM; performed the experiments, analyzed the data: CAA; performed the experiments: GEJG, GCC, VAF, SICE, HCP; software: CAGP; final edit of paper: LRP.

Data availability statement

The data of this study are available from the corresponding authors, upon reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

LRP is a fellow of the COFAA-IPN and of the SNI-CONACyT (11644), VAF is a fellow of the COFAA-IPN, CAA (53185), GCC (6630), GEJG (95426) and JCM (65406) are fellows of SNI-CONACyT.