Normal fertile Spermatozoal RNA Profiles

Numerous studies have shown the potential of spermatozoal RNAs to delineate failures of spermatogenic pathways in infertile samples. However, the RNA contribution of normal fertile samples still needs to be established in relation to transcripts consistently present in human spermatozoa. We report here the spermatozoal transcript profiles characteristic of 24 normally fertile individuals. RNA was extracted from the purified sperm cells of ejaculate and hybridized to Illumina Human-8 BeadChip Microarrays Spermatozoal RNAs were prepared from the semen samples of 24 fertile individuals who fathered at least one child. On each array, 18 normal fertile samples were hybridized along with somatic samples which were used as a hybridization control. Four samples of whole testis RNA were also used as references.