Fig. 6.

CFAP70-truncated mice exhibiting the OAT phenotype. (a) Schematic illustration of the targeting strategy for generating Cfap70-truncated mice. A 16-bp sequence within exon 25 was deleted using the CRISPR‒Cas9 technology. Sanger sequencing of founder mice and gRNA sequence are presented. (b) Immunoblotting of CFAP70 was performed in protein samples of mouse testis tissues. A full-length CFAP70 (∼128 kDa) and a truncated CFAP70 protein (∼110 kDa) were identified in testis samples of WT mice and Cfap70-truncated mice, respectively. β-actin served as a loading control. Western blotting experiments were repeated for three times and representative blots were shown. (c) Pregnancy rate of Cfap70-truncated male mice and their littermate WT male mice for 2 months. No females mated with Cfap70-truncated male mice were pregnant. Data are presented as the mean ± SD (n = 3 each group). (d) Sperm counts ( × 10⁷/mL) of Cfap70-truncated mice and their littermate WT mice. Data are presented as the mean ± SD (n = 3 each group). Statistical significance was determined by two-tailed, unpaired Student's t test; p = 0.0002. (e) Total sperm motility (%) of Cfap70-truncated mice and their littermate WT mice. Data are presented as the mean ± SD (n = 3 each group). Statistical significance was determined by two-tailed, unpaired Student's t test; p < 0.0001. (f) Sperm morphology in WT mice and Cfap70-truncated mice was observed by Papanicolaou staining. Experiments were repeated for three times and representative images were shown. Scale bars, 10 μm. (g) Representative SEM and TEM images of sperm from Cfap70-truncated mice and their littermate WT mice. CP, central pair; DMTs, peripheral doublet microtubules; ODFs, outer dense fibres. Scale bars in SEM, 10 μm; scale bars in TEM, 200 nm.