The Zebrafish Sperm Proteome

Fertilisation is based on the tight interaction between sperm and egg and both sperm and egg proteomes are known to evolve and diverge rapidly even between closely related species. Understanding the sperm proteome therefore provides key insights into the mechanisms involved during fertilisation and the fusion between sperm and egg. Despite being a commonly used model organism for reproductive research, very little is currently understood about the zebrafish Danio rerio sperm proteome. We performed in depth proteomics analysis with six pooled samples containing ejaculates from ten males each. We confidently identified 5410 proteins, from which a total of 3900 GeneIDs were generated leading to 1720 Gene Ontology terms. This number of proteins is larger than the number of proteins described in sperm proteomes of other species.