Abstract
Livestock production contributes to a significant part of the economy in developing countries. Although artificial insemination techniques brought substantial improvements in reproductive efficiency, male infertility remains a leading challenge in livestock. Current strategies for the diagnosis of male infertility largely depend on the evaluation of semen parameters and fail to diagnose idiopathic infertility in most cases. Recent evidences show that spermatozoa contains a suit of RNA population whose profile differs between fertile and infertile males. Studies have also demonstrated the crucial roles of spermatozoal RNA (spRNA) in spermatogenesis, fertilization, and early embryonic development. Thus, the spRNA profile may serve as unique molecular signatures of fertile sperm and may play pivotal roles in the diagnosis and treatment of male fertility. This manuscript provides an update on various spRNA populations, including protein-coding and non-coding RNAs, in livestock species and their potential role in semen quality, particularly sperm motility, freezability, and fertility. The contribution of seminal plasma to the spRNA population is also discussed. Furthermore, we discussed the significance of rare non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) such as long ncRNAs (lncRNAs) and circular RNAs (circRNAs) in spermatogenic events.
Highlights
Spermatogenic defects and sperm abnormalities are responsible for high incidence of male infertility cases in both animals and human
Various types of protein-coding and non-coding spermatozoal RNA (spRNA) have been documented in the literature with their potential roles in regulating male reproduction and fertility
These spRNAs may be exploited via transcriptome analysis of spermatozoa to improve the conception rate of livestock by crossbreeding, artificial insemination, or ARTs
Summary
Spermatogenic defects and sperm abnormalities are responsible for high incidence of male infertility cases in both animals and human. The sperm transcriptome profiling using Microarray (Das et al, 2013; Zhang Y. et al, 2017), and RNA-seq (Gòdia et al, 2018) have identified a suite of RNAs in spermatozoa (Sendler et al, 2013) that included both coding and non-coding transcripts and were associated with regulation of various biological functions such as chromatin repackaging, genomic imprinting, early embryonic development (Das et al, 2013), and post-fertilization events (Prakash et al, 2021).
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
