New ReproUnion Publication: Expression of the O-Glycosylation Enzyme GalNAc-T3 in the Equatorial Segment Correlates with the Quality of Spermatozoa.
Glycosylation is the addition of sugar moieties to proteins and is crucial for the function of most proteins. In this study, by the ReproUnion Ph.D.-student Marie Berg Nygaard, very primitive glycosylation patterns were identified in the equatorial segment of human sperm cells. Such primitive glycosylation patterns are found nowhere else in the human body. The expression of the enzyme GalNAc-T3, which is responsible for the presence of these primitive glycosylations, was furthermore found to correlate with the quality of sperm cells. Men with a good semen quality had significant more sperm cells with equatorial GalNAc-T3 expression than men with poor semen quality. The results indicate that these special glycosylations are important for the proper development of human sperm cells and likely also for their function. You can read the entire publication here