LncRNA gadd7, increased in varicocele patients, suppresses cell proliferation and promotes cell apoptosis

// Jun Zhao 1, * , Huan Li 1, * , Hao Deng 1, * , Li Zhu 1, * , Bingyu Zhou 1 , MeiQiong Yang 1 , QianRu Liu 1 , GuoQun Luo 1 , Yunxia Yang 1 and WenMin Ma 1 1 Assisted Reproductive Technology Center, Foshan Maternal and Child Health Care Hospital, Foshan, China * These authors are contributed equally to this work Correspondence to: Huan Li, email: 421991218@qq.com Keywords: gadd7; varicocele-related sperm impairment; male infertility Received: October 13, 2017     Accepted: October 30, 2017     Published: November 24, 2017 ABSTRACT Varicocele-related sperm damages are usually caused by oxidative stresses. Growing evidence indicates that lncRNA growth arrested DNA-damage inducible gene 7 (gadd7) is involved in the regulation of the oxidative stress responses. In this study, we measured the expression level of gadd7 in the sperm and found that the expression of gadd7 was significantly up-regulated in patients with varicocele compared with the healthy control. The relative expression level of gadd7 was negatively correlated with the sperm count. Overexpression of gadd7 suppressed cell proliferation and promoted cell apoptosis in mouse spermatocyte-derived cell lines GC-1 and GC-2. Furthermore, the protein level of Bax was raised while Bcl2 expression was reduced after overexpression of gadd7. This work provides a potential novel insight for the varicocele-related sperm impairment and male infertility.