Polyamines Protect Porcine Sperm from Lipopolysaccharide-induced Mitochondrial Dysfunction and Apoptosis via Casein Kinase 2 Activation

Rongnan Li; Xiaodong Wu; Jia Chen; Zhendong Zhu; Ming Guo; Guochao Hou; Tianjiao Li; Yi Zheng; Haidong Ma; Hongzhao Lu; Wenxian Zeng; Tao Zhang; Xiaoxu Chen

doi:10.1093/jas/skae383

Polyamines Protect Porcine Sperm from Lipopolysaccharide-induced Mitochondrial Dysfunction and Apoptosis via Casein Kinase 2 Activation

J Anim Sci. 2024 Dec 20:skae383. doi: 10.1093/jas/skae383. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Rongnan Li^{1

2}, Xiaodong Wu¹, Jia Chen³, Zhendong Zhu¹, Ming Guo¹, Guochao Hou¹, Tianjiao Li¹, Yi Zheng¹, Haidong Ma³, Hongzhao Lu³, Wenxian Zeng¹, Tao Zhang³, Xiaoxu Chen¹

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory for Animal Genetics, Breeding and Reproduction of Shaanxi Province, College of Animal Science and Technology, Northwest A&F University, Yangling, 712100, Shaanxi, China.
² College of Life Science, Shanxi Normal University, Taiyuan, 030000, Shanxi, China.
³ School of Biological Science and Engineering, Shaanxi University of Technology, Hanzhong, 723001, Shaanxi, China.

PMID: 39704338
DOI: 10.1093/jas/skae383

Abstract

Bacterial contamination is an inevitable issue during the processing of semen preservation in pigs. As a prototypical endotoxin from Gram-negative bacteria in semen, lipopolysaccharide (LPS) undermines sperm function during liquid preservation. Spermine and spermidine could protect cells against LPS-induced injury, and the content of spermine and spermidine in seminal plasma is positively correlated with sperm quality. Thus, the present study aimed to clarify whether addition of spermine or spermidine is beneficial to porcine semen preservation and able to prevent LPS-induced sperm damage. The supplementation of spermine and spermidine in the diluent resulted in higher sperm motility, viability, acrosome integrity, and mitochondrial membrane potential (ΔΨm) after preservation in vitro at 17 °C for 7 d (P < 0.05). LPS induced sperm quality deterioration, ΔΨm decline, cellular adenosine-triphosphate (ATP) depletion, mitochondrial ultrastructure abnormality, mitochondrial permeability transition pore (MPTP) opening, phosphatidylserine (PS) translocation, and caspase-3 activation (P < 0.05). Interestingly, spermine and spermidine alleviated the LPS-induced changes of the aforementioned parameters and mitigated the decrease in the microtubule-associated protein light chain 3-II (LC3-II) to LC3-I ratio. Meanwhile, the α and β subunits of casein kinase 2 (CK2) were detected at the connecting piece and the tail. Significantly, addition of 4,5,6,7-tetrabromobenzotriazole (TBB), a specific CK2 inhibitor, counteracted the beneficial effects of spermine and spermidine on sperm quality, mitochondrial activity, and apoptosis. Together, these results suggest that spermine and spermidine improve sperm quality and the efficiency of liquid preservation of porcine semen. Furthermore, spermine and spermidine alleviate LPS-induced sperm mitochondrial dysfunction and apoptosis in a CK2-dependent manner.

Keywords: casein kinase 2; lipopolysaccharide; mitochondria; polyamines; sperm.

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