Chronic inflammation drives epididymal tertiary lymphoid structure formation and autoimmune fertility disorders

We characterized the sperm proteins recognized by the antibodies in mouse serum and epididymal fluid after immune tolerance disruption by performing mass spectrometry-based label-free quantitative proteomics. For this, we immunoprecipitated sperm cell protein extractions with serum and epididymal fluids from the proximal and distal epididymis of WT and Foxp3-DTR transgenic mice 2 weeks after Treg depletion.