RNA sequencing of sperm extracted from the epididymis in naked mole-rat subordinates, naked mole-rat ex-subordinates, and mice
Naked mole-rat show a strong phenotype of sperm hypo-motility and abnormal morphology. Comparative genomic analyses in our study presenting the telomere-to-telomere genome for the naked mole-rat identified several sperm-gene relaxation and sperm-gene loss events in the NMR. To test the transcriptomic impacts of these gene-loss events, we performed RNA-seq between the sperm of NMR subordinates, ex-subordinates released from suppressive colony cues, and mice. Briefly, only 5-15% of NMR sperm have typical morphology, and only ~7% of those sperm were motile, whereas over 70% of M. musculus sperm are intact and motile There was insufficient motile sperm in the NMR to separate sperm based on motility before RNA-seq. This study was sequenced with sufficient depth to allow for improved sperm-gene annotation. As such, each sample contains over 50 million reads sequenced. In this study, we compared subordinate vs. ex-subordinates in the NMR, as well as all mice vs. all NMRs
Naked mole-rat show a strong phenotype of sperm hypo-motility and abnormal morphology. Comparative genomic analyses in our study presenting the telomere-to-telomere genome for the naked mole-rat identified several sperm-gene relaxation and sperm-gene loss events in the NMR. To test the transcriptomic impacts of these gene-loss events, we performed RNA-seq between the sperm of NMR subordinates, ex-subordinates released from suppressive colony cues, and mice. Briefly, only 5-15% of NMR sperm have typical morphology, and only ~7% of those sperm were motile, whereas over 70% of M. musculus sperm are intact and motile There was insufficient motile sperm in the NMR to separate sperm based on motility before RNA-seq. This study was sequenced with sufficient depth to allow for improved sperm-gene annotation. As such, each sample contains over 50 million reads sequenced. In this study, we compared subordinate vs. ex-subordinates in the NMR, as well as all mice vs. all NMRs