Table 3. Abnormal non-coding RNAs and male infertility.

Stage	Disease	Aetiology	Species	Reference
Spermatogenesis	Reduction of the spermatogonial proliferation and testicular atrophy	Depletion of the E2F1 that can modulate the miR449a/b positively	Mouse	Hoja et al.[81]
	Apoptosis of spermatocytes	Over-expression of the E2F1	Human	Marcet et al.[80]
	Chromatoid body fragmentation and severe DNA damage	Disruption of the MOV10L1 or the mutation of MOV10L1 causes a complete loss of piRNAs in pachytene spermatocytes and round spermatids	Mouse	Zheng and Wang[84]
	Spermiogenic arrest	Knockout of the MIWI gene	Mouse	Deng and Lin[89]
	Meiotic arrest	Knockout of the MILI and MIWI2 gene	Mouse	Kuramochi-Miyagawa et al.[90] Carmell et al. [91]
	Male infertility and testicular germ cell tumor	Abnormal testicular miR-383 expression, which can inhibit the expression of a tumor suppressor, interferon regulatory factor-1 (IRF1); the accumulation of NLC1-C in the nucleus of spermatogonia and primary spermatocytes represses both miR-320a and miR-383 transcription	Human /Mouse	Lian et al.[86] Lü et al. [96]
	Azoospermia	The levels of miR-34c-5p, miR-122, miR-146b-5p, miR-181a, miR-374b, miR-509 -5p, and miR-513a-5p were significantly lower	Human	Wang et al.[87]
	Asthenozoospermia	The levels of miR-34c-5p, miR-122, miR-146b-5p, miR-181a, miR-374b, miR-509 -5p, and miR-513a-5p were higher	Human	Wang et al.[87]
	Asthenozoospermia or oligoasthenozoospermia	miR-122 were down-regulated in the asthenozoospermia, which is synthesized only in round spermatids, participating in the post-transcriptional down-regulation of the TNP2 through targeting the 3′ untranslated region of the TNP2 mRNA; a decreased expression of HOTAIR, one of lncRNAs, may reduce H4 acetylation in Nrf2 promoter and Nrf2 expression	Human	Abu-Halima et al.[85] Zhang et al.[95]
	Oligoasthenoteratozoospermia	Loss of miR-34bc/449	Mouse	Comazzetto et al.[82]
	Reduced testis size and sperm count, and complete male infertility	Germ cell-specific deletion of the Dicer1	Mouse	Romero et al.[83]
	Infertility with a complete absence of sperm and testis degeneration	Ablation of Dicer in Sertoli cells	Mouse	Papaioannou et al.[88]
Embryogenesis	Sexually dimorphic, partial perinatal lethality, growth retardation, and infertility	Simultaneous inactivation of the miR-34b/c and miR-449	Mouse	Wu et al.[92]