Insights into the cellular and molecular changes in male infertility

Their analyses enabled a high-res picture to be obtained of testicles ( from left ): Sara Di Persio, Nina Neuhaus and Sandra Laurentino from the Centre of Reproductive Medicine, and Tobias Tekath from the Institute of Medical Informatics. WWU - L. Jeremies - "You can't see the wood for the trees" is a phrase which we certainly don't associate immediately with the medical examination and analysis of testicles. But in a certain way it applies here, too: testicles consist of many different types of cells, and up to now this complex quality prevented these types from being isolated and then analysed. And this posed problems for physicians and researchers especially in the diagnosis and treatment of male infertility. Dr. Nina Neuhaus and Dr. Sandra Laurentino from Clinical Research Group 326 - "Male Germ Cells" - at the University of Münster want to change this. The project the two researchers are engaged on reveals for the first time - on the basis of the RNA sequencing of individual cells - the molecular and cellular changes in the testicular tissue of infertile men. The authors have now published the data in the prestigious journal "Cell Reports Medicine".