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. 2024 Sep-Oct;18(5):15579883241286672.
doi: 10.1177/15579883241286672.

A Study of Sperm DNA Damage Mechanism Based on miRNA Sequencing

Feng Liu  1 , Miaomiao Ma  1 , Luyu Li  1 , Yongtao Zhang  1 , Yihan Shang  1 , Quan Yuan  1 , Baojun Ju  2 , Zulong Wang  2
Affiliations

A Study of Sperm DNA Damage Mechanism Based on miRNA Sequencing

Feng Liu et al. Am J Mens Health. 2024 Sep-Oct.

Abstract

To analyze the differential expression profiles of microRNAs (miRNAs) in spermatozoa of patients with sperm DNA damage and to investigate the role of miRNAs in sperm DNA damage. Male infertility patients with sperm DNA damage who attended the First Affiliated Hospital of Henan University of Chinese Medicine from October 2023 to December 2023 were selected and included in this study as a case group. Fertile healthy men who were seen at the health check-up center during the same period and diagnosed by examination were also included as a control group. Sperm miRNA expression was detected in patients with sperm DNA damage (case group, n = 5) and healthy medical check-ups (control group, n = 5) using high-throughput sequencing technology. The differentially expressed miRNAs between the two groups were bioinformatically analyzed to explore the main biological functions of the target genes. We found that 63 miRNAs were significantly changed in the spermatozoa of patients with sperm DNA damage,|log2 (foldchange)| ≥ 1, p < .05. Gene Ontology (GO) enrichment analysis indicated that these differential miRNAs might be involved in developmental process, anatomical structure development, cellular macromolecule metabolic process, multicellular organism development, system development, and so on. Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) enrichment analysis showed that that they mainly affect the PI3K-AKT signaling pathway. The present study suggests that the altered expression of miR-1255a, miR-921, and miR-3156-5p may play an important role in the sperm DNA damage process, and the mechanism may involve the phosphatidylinositol-3'-kinase-AKT (PI3K-AKT) signaling pathway.

Keywords: bioinformatics analysis; male infertility; microRNA; sperm DNA damage; sperm DNA fragmentation.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of Conflicting InterestsThe author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Heatmap of Differentially Expressed miRNAs Note. A3, A4, A5, A7, and A9 are the serial numbers of samples from the spermatozoa with elevated DFI group, and B1, B2, B3, B4, and B5 are the serial numbers of samples from the healthy control group; miRNAs are microRNAs. miRNAs sequenced by high-throughput sequencing of a total of 63 miRNAs met the criterion of significance for the sequence differences,|log2 (foldchange)| ≥ 1 and p < .05.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
TOP30 GO Entries of the GO Enrichment Analysis Note. The figure shows the results of the top 30 items sorted by richness significance (p value). The horizontal coordinate is the Rich factor, and the vertical coordinate is the name of the specific GO entry. The color of the dots on the graph indicates the degree of GO significance (p value), the shape of the dots indicates which of the three major categories of the GO database the corresponding GO entry belongs to, and the size of the dots characterizes the number of genes mapped to this GO entry.
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
TOP30 Pathway of the KEGG Enriches Note. The figure shows the results of the top 30 items sorted by p value. The horizontal coordinate is the Rich factor, and the vertical coordinate is the specific KEGG pathway name. The color of the dots on the graph indicates the significance of the pathway (p value), and the size of the dots characterizes the number of genes mapped to the pathway.
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