Human spermatozoa as a model for studying membrane receptors mediating rapid nongenomic effects of progesterone and estrogens.

In the past few years, besides the classical genomic effects of steroid hormones, a plethora of so called rapid non genomic effects have been described in different cell types, which are too rapid to be due to activation of gene expression. Although some of these effects might involve the same nuclear steroid receptors acting on different cellular signalling, others have been ascribed to poorly characterized membrane receptors. Several rapid nongenomic effects of progesterone (P) and estrogens (E) have been recently demonstrated in human spermatozoa. They seem to be mediated by the steroid binding to specific receptors on plasma membrane different from the classical ones. In particular, P has been demonstrated to stimulate calcium influx, tyrosine phosphorylation of sperm proteins, including extracellular signaling regulated kinases, chloride efflux and cAMP increase, finally resulting in activation of spermatozoa through induction of capacitation, hyperactivated motility and acrosome reaction. Conversely, E, by acting rapidly on calcium influx and on protein tyrosine phosphorylation, seem to modulate sperm responsiveness to P. Several attempts have been used to characterize the putative membrane receptors for P (mPR) and E (mER) in spermatozoa, however their isolation still remains elusive. However, in the past few years our laboratory has obtained several evidences supporting the existence and functional activity of mPR and mER in human spermatozoa. To characterize these membrane receptors, we used two antibodies directed against the ligand binding domains of the classical receptors, namely c262 and H222 antibodies for PR and ER respectively, hypothesizing that these regions should be conserved between nongenomic and genomic receptors. In western blot analysis of sperm lysates the antibodies detected a band of about 57 kDa for PR and of 29 kDa for ER, excluding the presence of the classical receptors. On live human spermatozoa, both antibodies were able to block the calcium and AR response to P and E respectively, whereas, antibodies directed against different domains of the classical PR and ER were ineffective. Moreover, c262 antibody also blocks in vitro human sperm penetration of hamster oocytes. Taken together all these data strongly support the existence of mPR and mER different from the classical ones, mediating rapid effects of these steroid hormones in human spermatozoa.