The Effects of Flavonoid Apigenin on Male Reproductive Health: Inhibition of Spermatogonial Proliferation through Downregulation of <em>Prmt7</em>/<em>Akt3</em> Pathway

Apigenin, a common dietary flavonoid abundantly present in a variety of fruits and vegetables, has promising anticancer properties. As an effector of apigenin in myoblasts, protein arginine methyltransferase 7 (<i>Prmt7</i>) is required for male germ cell development. However, whether ap...

Descripción completa

Guardado en:
Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Bingyuan Wang, Mingrui Zhang, Jiankang Guo, Zhiguo Liu, Rong Zhou, Fei Guo, Kui Li, Yulian Mu
Formato: article
Lenguaje:EN
Publicado: MDPI AG 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://doaj.org/article/d435b2e721964d0f99bd1a340da5a1b4
Etiquetas: Agregar Etiqueta
Sin Etiquetas, Sea el primero en etiquetar este registro!
Descripción
Sumario:Apigenin, a common dietary flavonoid abundantly present in a variety of fruits and vegetables, has promising anticancer properties. As an effector of apigenin in myoblasts, protein arginine methyltransferase 7 (<i>Prmt7</i>) is required for male germ cell development. However, whether apigenin may influence male reproductive health through <i>Prmt7</i> is still unclear. To this end, mouse spermatogonia were treated with different concentrations (2.5 to 50 μM) of apigenin for 48 h, which showed that apigenin could cause reduced cell proliferation in conjunction with longer S phase and G2/M phase (with concentrations of 10 and 20 μM, respectively), and increased apoptosis of spermatogonia (with concentration of 20 μM). Reduced <i>Prmt7</i> expression was found in 20 μM apigenin-treated spermatogonia. Moreover, siRNA-induced <i>Prmt7</i> knockdown exhibited similar influence on spermatogonia as that of apigenin treatment. In mechanistic terms, transcriptome analysis revealed 287 differentially expressed genes between <i>Prmt7</i>-downregulated and control spermatogonia. Furthermore, rescue experiments suggested that the effects of apigenin on spermatogonia might be mediated through the <i>Prmt7</i>/<i>Akt3</i> pathway. Overall, our study supports that apigenin can interfere with mouse spermatogonial proliferation by way of the downregulated <i>Prmt7</i>/<i>Akt3</i> pathway, which demonstrates that the concentration should be taken into account in future applications of apigenin for cancer therapy of men.