Proteomic Identification of Rainbow Trout Sperm Proteins

Proteomics represents a powerful tool for the analysis of fish spermatozoa, since these cells are transcriptionally inactive. The aim of the present study was to generate an inventory of the most prominent rainbow trout sperm proteins by SDS-PAGE prefractionation combined with nano-LC-MS/MS based identification. This study provides the first in-depth analysis of the rainbow trout sperm proteome, with a total of 206 identified proteins. We found that rainbow trout spermatozoa are equipped with functionally diverse proteins related to energetic metabolism, signal transduction, protein turnover, transport, cytoskeleton, oxidative injuries, and stress and reproduction. The availability of a catalog of rainbow trout sperm proteins provides a crucial tool for the understanding of fundamental molecular processes in fish spermatozoa, for the ongoing development of novel markers of sperm quality and for the optimization of short- and long-term sperm preservation procedures. The MS data are available at ProteomeXchange with the dataset identifier PXD000355 and DOI 10.6019/PXD000355.