UDMH-induced testicular toxicity and lycopene protection in rats: a three-arm transcriptome study (control, UDMH exposure, UDMH + lycopene)

This study investigates unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine (UDMH)-induced testicular toxicity and the protective efficacy of lycopene in adult male Sprague-Dawley rats (8 weeks old). Following acclimation, rats (n=10/group) were assigned to: Control (filtered air exposure), UDMH (inhalation of 140 ppm UDMH vapor, 1 h/day, 5 days/week for 4 weeks), or UDMH + Lycopene (identical UDMH exposure plus daily oral lycopene, 10 mg/kg body weight). Testes were excised immediately post-exposure, snap-frozen, and total RNA was extracted using TRIzol. Strand-specific cDNA libraries were constructed from poly(A)-enriched mRNA (oligo(dT) beads) at Shanghai Majorbio Bio-pharm Biotechnology Co., Ltd. Library preparation involved mRNA fragmentation, double-stranded cDNA synthesis, end-repair/A-tailing, Illumina adapter ligation, size selection (~300 bp), and PCR amplification. Final libraries were quantified (Qubit 4.0), pooled equimolarly, and sequenced paired-end (150 bp) on an Illumina NovaSeq X Plus platform using NovaSeq Reagent Kit v1.5. This dataset provides raw FASTQ files, processed gene-level counts (STAR/featureCounts pipeline), and comprehensive metadata to support mechanistic exploration of UDMH-induced testicular injury and lycopene-mediated cytoprotection.