Activation of thermogenesis pathways in testis of diet-induced obesity mice

Abstract

High-fat diet (HFD) induced obesity (DIO) has been shown impacts on metabolism, hormonal profile, male fertility, and spermatogenesis. We employed genome-wide transcriptional analysis on the testis of diet induced obesity (DIO) and normal chow (NC) C57BL/6 J male mice to search genes regulated by obesity in testis. Both blood glucose and lipids contents significantly increased in DIO mice after 8 weeks fat-rich feeding. RNA-seq analysis revealed 371 down-regulated and 460 up-regulated transcripts in DIO group comparing to NC group. Chromosome 3, 4, 9, 16, and 18 were significantly more active, while chromosome 5, 10, and 19 were significantly more inactive after 8-week fat-diet feeding. Wilcoxon enrichment analysis discovered that the thermogenesis pathway (KEGG) was significantly enriched in the testis of DIO group (with 8 enriched up-regulated genes: Smarca2, Adcy3, Atp5pb, Creb1, Gnas, Rps6kb2, Upcrc1 and Dpf1). Real-time PCR further confirmed that Smarca2 and Atp5pb were upregulated in the testis of DIO mice. These finding implied that diet-induced thermogenesis pathways could be altered in the testis of DIO mice.

Keywords: Diet induced obesity; Energy consumption; Male infertility; RNA-seq; Thermogenesis.