In‐Vivo Knockdown of Cortactin Disrupts Basal Tubulobulbar Complexes and Results in the Presence of Redundant Junction Related Ectoplasmic Specializations
Bibliographic record
Abstract
In the mammalian testis, spermatogenic cells begin development in the germ cell niche or basal compartment of the seminiferous epithelium. They then translocate through massive junction complexes between neighboring Sertoli cells to enter the adluminal compartment and further differentiate. Removal of the junctions above and formation of new junctions below is necessary for the translocation of cells from one compartment to the other. Tubulobulbar complexes’ (TBCs) are Sertoli cell specific structures that are proposed to internalize intercellular junctions in the seminiferous epithelium. TBCs are actin cuffed endocytic structures that share many features in common with clathrin mediated endocytosis (CME). Both TBCs and CME vesicles begin with the association of a clathrin coated pit on the plasma membrane and the development of dendritic actin ‘cuffs’ on their neck regions. Rather than vesiculating, the necks of TBCs continue to lengthen into microns long structures, eventually developing an actin free ‘bulb’ region, which develops an ORP9 positive membrane contact site with an associated leaflet of endoplasmic reticulum. One of the proteins known to be highly specific for the dendritic actin around TBCs is the actin related protein, cortactin. It previously has been shown that knockdown of cortactin causes shortening and disorganization of those TBCs at the apex of the epithelium that are associated with late spermatids, and this is correlated with a delay in sperm release. However, it has not been shown if disruption of cortactin expression has similar effects on TBCs associated with the basal junction complexes and whether or not this has an effect on junction removal. Here we use electron microscopy (EM) and stimulated emission depletion (STED) super resolution microscopy to evaluate the phenotype of rat testes injected 5 times over a 9‐day period with siRNA targeting cortactin, and use western blots to confirm the knockdown. In vivo knockdown of cortactin in rat testes disrupts basal TBCs when sections labeled for ORP9 and cortactin/actin are evaluated by STED, and leads to the presence of redundant junction related material (ectoplasmic specializations) when evaluated by EM. These data are consistent with the conclusion that TBCs internalize basal junctions and are likely part of the mechanism of spermatocyte translocation from basal to adluminal compartments of the epithelium. Support or Funding Information Supported by a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Discovery Grant to A Wayne Vogl (RGPIN‐2018‐03727).
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".