Protamine alterations in human spermatozoa.

Protamines are the major nuclear proteins in sperm cells, having a crucial role in the correct packaging of the paternal DNA. The fact that protamine haploinsufficiency in mice resulted in abnormal chromatin packaging and male infertility suggested that the protamines could also be important candidates in explaining some of the idiopathic male infertility cases in humans. The first clinical studies focused on analyzing protamines at the protein level. Various studies have found the presence of an altered amount of protamines in some infertile patients, in contrast to the normal situation in fertile individuals where the two protamines, protamine 1 and protamine 2, are both present in approximately equal quantities. Subsequently, the protamine genes were the subject of various mutational genetic screening studies in search of variants that could be associated with deregulation in the protamine expression observed. The results of these protamine mutational studies showed that the presence of high penetrant mutations is a very rare cause of male infertility. However, some variants and some haplotypes described may behave as risk factors for male infertility. More recently, the presence of RNA in the mature sperm cell has also been investigated. The present chapter will introduce the basic aspects of protamine evolution and function and review the various articles published to date on the relationship between the protamines studied at the DNA, RNA, and protein levels and male infertility.