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Research Paper|Volume 11, Issue 15|pp 5757—5768

Identification and characterization of telocytes in rat testis

Yifei Liu1, Yu Liang1, Siyi Wang1, Imran Tarique1, Waseem Ali Vistro1, Haiyan Zhang2, Abdul Haseeb1, Noor Samad Gandahi1, Adeela Iqbal1, Tianci An1, Huan Yang1, Qiusheng Chen1, Ping Yang1,3
  • 1MOE Joint International Research Laboratory of Animal Health and Food Safety, College of Veterinary Medicine, Nanjing Agricultural University, Nanjing 210095, Jiangsu, China
  • 2School of Biological Engineering, Wuhu Institute of Technology, Wuhu 241003, Anhui, China
  • 3College of Animal Science and Technology, Nanjing Agricultural University, Nanjing 210095, Jiangsu, China
Received: January 25, 2019Accepted: August 5, 2019Published: August 14, 2019
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.102158

Copyright © 2019 Liu et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 3.0 License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Abstract

In this study, we investigated the localization, morphological features and cellular interactions of telocytes in the rat testicular interstitium. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and immunohistochemical and immunofluorescence analyses of the rat testicular interstitium showed a distinct layer of telocytes surround the seminiferous tubules along with inner layer of peritubular myoid cells. The majority of the telocytes were made up of a small cell body and moniliform prolongations that contained mitochondria and secretory vesicles. Some other telocytes were observed possessing large cell bodies. Within the testicular interstitium, the telocytes formed a network connecting peritubular myoid cells, Leydig cells as well as blood vessels. Immunohistochemical and double immunofluorescence analyses showed that rat testicular telocytes express CD34 and PDGFRα, but are negative for vimentin and α-SMA. Our findings demonstrate the presence of telocytes in the rat testicular interstitium. These cells interact with peritubular myoid cells, seminiferous tubules, Leydig cells and blood vessels via long telopode extensions, which suggests their vital role in the intercellular communication between different cell types within the rat testis.