Effect of 9 days of inhibited GDNF signaling on the transcriptome of the mouse testis

In the normal adult testis GDNF specifically targets spermatogonial stem cells and early progenitor spermatogonia. Inhibition of GDNF signaling for 9 days alters only 171 of the 15,000 transcripts expressed in the mouse testis. Many of these transcripts are known to be expressed by the spermatogonial stem cells. One transcript that is affected is Kif26A, a known suppressor of GDNF signaling. We used a chemical-genetic approach to inhibit GDNF signaling in vivo. Mice were treated for 9 days with inhibitor or vehicle (n=3/group) and testes collect on day 14 of the experiment. Total testis RNA was isolated, polyA+ libraries were generated with the NEBNext Ultra Directional RNA Library kit. Libraries were sequenced using an Illumina NextSeq500 instrument, to minimum 30 million single end 81nt reads per library.