Melatonin alleviates heat stress-induced spermatogenesis dysfunction in male dairy goats by regulating arachidonic acid metabolism mediated by remodeling the gut microbiota

作者：Xinrui Guo, Jing Xu, Yongkang Zhao, Jie Wang, Ting Ting Fu, Mathias L. Richard, Harry Sokol, Miao Wang, Yu Li, Yang Liu, Hui Wang, Chenlei Wang, Xueqin Wang, Haiyang He, Yazhou Wang, Baohua Ma, Sha Peng · 发表于：Microbiome · 年份：2024 · DOI：10.1186/s40168-024-01942-6 · 被引用次数：33 · 研究领域：Effects of Environmental Stressors on Livestock、Sperm and Testicular Function、Reproductive Physiology in Livestock

BACKGROUND: Heat stress (HS) commonly occurring in summer has gradually become a factor threatening the reproductive performance of male dairy goats by reducing their fecundity. Despite the melatonin is applied to relieve HS, it is still unclear whether melatonin protects against reproductive damage induced by HS in dairy goats and how it works. The purpose of the present study is to evaluate the role of melatonin in alleviating HS-induced spermatogenesis dysfunction in male dairy goats and further explore its mechanism. RESULTS: HS impaired spermatogenesis, sperm formation in the testes, and sperm maturation in the epididymis of dairy goats, resulting in decreased sperm quality. Melatonin rescued the decrease of sperm quality induced by HS via decreasing inflammatory and oxidative stress levels in testicular tissue and enhancing intercellular barrier function within the testes. Amplicon-based microbiota analysis revealed that despite gut microbiota differences between melatonin-treated dairy goats and NC dairy goats to some extent, melatonin administration tends to return the gut microbiota of male dairy goats under HS to the levels of natural control dairy goats. To explore whether the protective role of melatonin in sperm quality is mediated by regulating gut microbiota, fecal microbiota of HS dairy goats with or without melatonin treatment were transferred to HS mice, respectively. We found HS mice that had received fecal bacteria of HS dairy goats experienced serious tes...