Regulatory complexity revealed by integrated cytological and RNA-seq analyses of meiotic substages in mouse spermatocytes

The juvenile onset of spermatogenesis in mice is analyzed by combining cytological and transcriptomic data in a novel computational analysis, resulting in meiotic substage-specific transcriptomes and the discovery of a transcription factor network that regulates the substages of meiosis. Overall design: Germ cells from testes of individual mice were obtained at two-day intervals from 8 to 18 days post-partum (dpp), with five biological replicates at each age (samples 8_1 through 18_5). Eight stages were discriminated cytologically by combinatorial antibody labeling, and RNA-seq was performed on the same samples. A novel permutation-based maximum covariance analysis (PMCA) method was developed to deconvolve genes into meiotic substages. To verify PMCA derived pachytene/diplotene substage-specific genes, we isolated enriched populations of adult pachytene germ cells (samples rep1 through rep4), followed the same RNA-seq protocol, and compared the PMCA derived substage-specific gene lists to the genes expressed in the pachytene/diplotene enriched germ cells.

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Ball RL, Fujiwara Y, Sun F, Hu J, Hibbs MA, Handel MA, Carter GW