HSF2 Aids Fertility in Mice

A study out of the Turku Centre for Biotechnology in Finland used ChIP-chip analysis to discover that heat shock factor 2 (HSF2), a transcription factor involved in spermatogenesis, binds the male-specific region of the mouse Y chromosome long arm (MSYq) in mouse testis. Deletions in this gene are known to result in sperm head defects and impaired fertility. In their study published yesterday in PNAS, they found that disruption of the Hsf2 gene resulted in similar phenotypic changes as deletions in MSYq, suggesting that HSF2 plays a serious role in regulating MSYq genes and the quality of sperm.