Female Lethality and Apoptosis of Spermatocytes in Mice Lacking the UBR2 Ubiquitin Ligase of the N-End Rule Pathway

Substrates of the ubiquitin-dependent N-end rule pathway include proteins with destabilizing N-terminal residues. UBR1-/- mice, which lacked the pathway's ubiquitin ligase E3α, were viable and retained the N-end rule pathway. The present work describes the identification and analysis of mouse UBR2, a homolog of UBR1. We demonstrate that the substrate-binding properties of UBR2 are highly similar to those of UBR1, identifying UBR2 as the second E3 of the mammalian N-end rule pathway. UBR2-/- mouse strains were constructed, and their viability was found to be dependent on both gender and genetic background. In the strain 129 (inbred) background, the UBR2-/- genotype was lethal to most embryos of either gender. In the 129/B6 (mixed) background, most UBR2-/- females died as embryos, whereas UBR2-/- males were viable but infertile, owing to the postnatal degeneration of the testes. The gross architecture of UBR2-/- testes was normal and spermatogonia were intact as well, but UBR2-/- spermatocytes were arrested between leptotene/zygotene and pachytene and died through apoptosis. A conspicuous defect of UBR2-/- spermatocytes was the absence of intact synaptonemal complexes. We conclude that the UBR2 ubiquitin ligase and, hence, the N-end rule pathway are required for male meiosis and spermatogenesis and for an essential aspect of female embryonic development.