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Complex traits
Original article
Genome-wide association study identifies ERBB4 on 2q34 as a novel locus associated with sperm motility in Japanese men
  1. Youichi Sato1,
  2. Atsushi Tajima2,3,
  3. Takehiro Sato3,
  4. Shiari Nozawa4,
  5. Miki Yoshiike4,
  6. Issei Imoto2,
  7. Aiko Yamauchi1,
  8. Teruaki Iwamoto4,5
  1. 1 Department of Pharmaceutical Information Science, Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, Tokushima University, Tokushima, Japan
  2. 2 Department of Human Genetics, Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, Tokushima University, Tokushima, Japan
  3. 3 Department of Bioinformatics and Genomics, Graduate School of Advanced Preventive Medical Sciences, Kanazawa University, Kanazawa, Japan
  4. 4 Department of Urology, St. Marianna University School of Medicine, Kawasaki, Japan
  5. 5 Center for Infertility and IVF, International University of Health and Welfare Hospital, Nasushiobara, Japan
  1. Correspondence to Dr Youichi Sato, Department of Pharmaceutical Information Science, Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, Tokushima University, 1-78-1 Sho-machi, Tokushima, 770-8505, Japan; youichi.sato{at}tokushima-u.ac.jp and Prof. Atsushi Tajima, Department of Bioinformatics and Genomics, Graduate School of Advanced Preventive Medical Sciences, Kanazawa University, 13-1 Takara-machi, Kanazawa, 920-8640, Japan; atajima{at}med.kanazawa-u.ac.jp

Abstract

Background The decrease in sperm motility has a potent influence on fertilisation. Sperm motility, represented as the percentage of motile sperm in ejaculated sperms, is influenced by lifestyle habits or environmental factors and by inherited factors. However, genetic factors contributing to individual differences in sperm motility remain unclear. To identify genetic factors that influence human sperm motility, we performed a genome-wide association study (GWAS) of sperm motility.

Methods A two-stage GWAS was conducted using 811 Japanese men in a discovery stage, followed by a replication study using an additional 779 Japanese men.

Results In the two-staged GWAS, a single nucleotide polymorphism rs3791686 in the intron of gene for erb-b2 receptor tyrosine kinase 4 (ERBB4) on chromosome 2q34 was identified as a novel locus for sperm motility, as evident from the discovery and replication results using meta-analysis (β=−4.01, combined P=5.40×10−9).

Conclusions Together with the previous evidence that Sertoli cell-specific Erbb4-knockout mice display an impaired ability to produce motile sperm, this finding provides the first genetic evidence for further investigation of the genome-wide significant association at the ERBB4 locus in larger studies across diverse human populations.

  • genome-wide
  • reproductive medicine

This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

https://doi.org/10.1136/jmedgenet-2017-104991

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    Footnotes

    • YS and AT contributed equally.

    • Contributors YS and AT conceived, designed the experiments, performed the experiments and wrote the paper. TS performed the imputation analysis. SN, MY and TI prepared and collected samples. II contributed material and analysis tools. YS, AT, TS, II, AY and TI reviewed and revised the manuscript.

    • Funding This study was supported in part by the Ministry of Health and Welfare of Japan (1013201) (to TI), Grant-in-Aids for Scientific Research (C) (26462461) (to YS), (23510242) (to AT) and Grant-in-Aids for Scientific Research (B) (17H04331) (to YS), (15H04320) (to AT) from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, the European Union (BMH4-CT96-0314) (to TI), the Takeda Science Foundation (to AT) and The Suzuki Urinary Foundation (to YS).

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Patient consent Obtained.

    • Ethics approval This study was approved by the ethics committees of the University of Tokushima and St. Marianna Medical University. All participants provided written informed consent.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.