Johannisson R, Schulze W, Holstein AF. Megalospermatocytes in the human testis exhibit asynapsis of chromosomes.
Andrologia 2003;
35:146-51. [PMID:
12780531 DOI:
10.1046/j.1439-0272.2003.00551.x]
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Abstract
Testis biopsies of three infertile patients were identified, which showed a predomination of megalospermatocytes in the seminiferous tubules. Megalospermatocytes are very large primary spermatocytes indicating a spermatogenic arrest. Because of the high percentage of these germ cells it was possible to apply a whole-mount spreading technique to investigate the chromosomal pairing behaviour in prophase I of meiosis. It could be shown that most of the megalospermatocytes exhibited extensive chromosomal asynapsis, suggesting that a characteristic meiotic disorder may give rise to reduced fertility, or even infertility.
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