- Title
- Androgen receptor expression is required to ensure development of adult Leydig cells and to prevent development of steroidogenic cells with adrenal characteristics in the mouse testis
- Creator
- O'Shaughnessy, Peter J.; Mitchell, Rod T.; Monteiro, Ana; O'Hara, Laura; Cruickshanks, Lyndsey; Claahsen-van der Grinten, Hedi; Brown, Pamela; Abel, Margaret; Smith, Lee B.
- Relation
- BMC Developmental Biology Vol. 19, no. 8
- Publisher Link
- http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12861-019-0189-5
- Publisher
- BioMed Central
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2019
- Description
- Background: The interstitium of the mouse testis contains Leydig cells and a small number of steroidogenic cells with adrenal characteristics which may be derived from the fetal adrenal during development or may be a normal subset of the developing fetal Leydig cells. Currently it is not known what regulates development and/or proliferation of this sub-population of steroidogenic cells in the mouse testis. Androgen receptors (AR) are essential for normal testicular function and in this study we have examined the role of the AR in regulating interstitial cell development. Results: Using a mouse model which lacks gonadotropins and AR (hpg.ARKO), stimulation of luteinising hormone receptors in vivo with human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) caused a marked increase in adrenal cell transcripts/ protein in a group of testicular interstitial cells. hCG also induced testicular transcripts associated with basic steroidogenic function in these mice but had no effect on adult Leydig cell-specific transcript levels. In hpg mice with functional AR, treatment with hCG induced Leydig cell-specific function and had no effect on adrenal transcript levels. Examination of mice with cell-specific AR deletion and knockdown of AR in a mouse Leydig cell line suggests that AR in the Leydig cells are likely to regulate these effects. Conclusions: This study shows that in the mouse the androgen receptor is required both to prevent development of testicular cells with adrenal characteristics and to ensure development of an adult Leydig cell phenotype.
- Subject
- testis; androgen receptor; Leydig; adrenal; development; stereology
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1415308
- Identifier
- uon:36888
- Identifier
- ISSN:1471-213X
- Rights
- © The Author(s). 2019 Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
- Language
- eng
- Full Text
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