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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2010 May 3.
Published in final edited form as: J Biol Rhythms. 2008 Feb;23(1):26–36. doi: 10.1177/0748730407311254

Figure 1.

Figure 1

Bmal1 knockout (KO) male mice have reproductive deficiencies but functional sperm. (A) Photos are of organs collected from 12-week-old littermates. Genotypes are indicated. Top panel: Sections of caput epididymi showing fewer sperm in the Bmal1 KO animal in comparison to its wild-type littermate. Exact counts are provided in Table 1. Magnification is ×40. Middle panel: Sections of testes showing smaller seminiferous tubules in the Bmal1 KO mice in comparison to the wild-type littermate. Magnification is ×20. Bottom panel: Photos comparing the sizes of the seminal vesicles and a testis from wild-type and Bmal1 KO littermates. (B) There is no difference in capacitation of sperm from Bmal1 KO, heterozygous, and wild-type mice. Sperm were collected from the caudal epididymi of 12-week-old littermates and subjected to capacitation analysis by detection of proteins containing phosphotyrosine. Fewer sperm were collected from Het and KO mice (due to the lower sperm counts in these animals), resulting in lighter bands. However, the pattern of phosphorylated proteins is the same.