Prediction of the effect of hsa-miR-3680-3p and hsa-miR-671-5p on azoospermia

Spermatogenesis is a significant process involving several stages of proliferation, differentiation and cell death. Any factor that disrupts each of these steps can lead to disruption of sperm production and cause problems like azoospermia. Azoospermia or lack of sperm in semen is one of the main causes of male infertility, which can be due to obstructive of the sperm duct or a genetic defect in the production of sperm. One of the disrupters of spermatogenesis is an aberrant expression of miRNAs.miRNAs are a class of regulatory non-coding RNAs that have about 21-25 nt. These RNAs control gene expression by targeting mRNA or repression of translation. In this bioinformatics study, two key genes in spermatogenesis including crem and Bmp8b were selected by using KEGG software and corresponding literature mining. We predicted possible interactions between these genes and miRNAs (expression of these miRNAs in testicular tissue confirmed by TissueAtlas database), by using computational tools such as miRwalk2.0, TargetScan, picTar, andmiRanda. Based on studies, increase in expression level of hsa-miR-3680-3p and hsa-miR-671-5p in testis, these miRNAs may interact with transcripts of crem gene and Bmp8b gene, respectively and by inhibiting these two genes, the spermatogenesis is inhibited and probably causing disorders including azoospermia. Therefore, considering the role of these miRNAs in inhibiting the crem and Bmp8b genes (which play an important role in spermatogenesis), these miRNAs may be used as pharmaceuticaland therapeutic potentials and azoospermic biomarkers.