KAWANO NATSUKO    Department   Undergraduate School  , School of Agriculture    Position   Associate Professor
Date	2017/03/29
Presentation Theme	Seminal vesicle protein SVS2 is required for sperm survival in the uterus
Conference	The 94th Annual Meeting of the Physiological Society of Japan
Conference Type	Domestic
Presentation Type	Panelist at Symposium/Workshop (Applied)
Contribution Type	Collaborative
Invited	Invited
Venue	Hamamatsu City, Shizuoka Pref.
Publisher and common publisher	Natsuko Kawano, Woojin Kang, Kaoru Yoshida, Manabu Yoshida,Kenji Miyado
Details	In mammals, sperm migrate through the female reproductive tract to reach the egg; however, our understanding of this journey is highly limited. To shed light on this process, we focused on defining the functions of seminal vesicle secretion 2 (SVS2). SVS2−/− male mice produced sperm but were severely subfertile, and formation of a copulatory plug to cover the female genital opening did not occur. Surprisingly, even when artificial insemination was performed with silicon as a substitute for the plug, sperm fertility in the absence of SVS2 remained severely reduced because the sperm were already dead in the uterus. Thus, our results provide evidence that the uterus induces sperm cell death and that SVS2 protects sperm from uterine attack.