Identification of sperm/egg small noncoding RNAs in mouse. Mus musculus

The recent discovery of a significant amount of RNA in spermatozoa contradicted the previously held belief that transcription was uncommon in sperm cells. Furthermore, the detection of RNA in sperm raised the intriguing question of its possible role in embryonic development. The possibility that RNA may serve as epigenetic determinants was supported by experiments in mouse models in which inheritance of epigenetic traits was regulated by RNA. We used high-throughput, large-scale sequencing technology to analyze sperm RNA.