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Relation of the Chronic Damage of Testicular Germ Cells and Its Fas Ligand Expression Induced by Ethanol
Jin-Fu Zhang, Ya-Ping Gui, Jia-Hua Hu1*
Department of Urology, Tongji Hospital of Tongji University, Shanghai 200065, China; 1Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 200031, China)
Abstract: To explore the mechanisms of chronic damage of testicular germ cells induced by chronic ethanol on the transgenic mice ubiquitously expressing human FasL， both wild type (WT) mice and transgenic (TG) mice were fed with ethanol (20% V/V) for 12 weeks. The histological changes of testicular germ cells were assessed by HE dying， and the Fas ligand (FasL) expression was detected using RT-PCR and Western blot. The result showed that there was a degenerative change in epithelial component of the tubules in TG mice whereas a normal shape in that of WT mice after a chronic ethanol feeding for both， and the FasL was up-regulated in the testis of ethanol-treated TG and WT mice compared with corresponding vehicle-treated control mice (P<0.05) after a 12-week treatment. These evidences suggest that the up-regulation of FasL may be involved in the chronic damage of testicular germ cells induced by chronic ethanol， and Fas/FasL could act as a regulator for the apoptosis of testicular germ cells.
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