Developmental Testicular Expression, Cloning, and Characterization of Rat HDAC6 In Silico

We had previously reported presence of histone deacetylase 6 (HDAC6) in sperm and demonstrated its tubulin deacetylase activity and role in sperm motility in rat. In the present study we report its abundant expression in testis, epididymis, accessory sex organs, brain, and adrenal. In the testis, HDAC6 transcript and protein were observed throughout development. We therefore cloned the gene from rat testis using primers for hdac6 (accession number XM_228753.8) in order to determine the role of acetylation/deacetylation in spermatogenesis. The cloned rat hdac6 gene is ~3.5 kb with 28 exons and 1152 amino acids. We noted 4 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) on exons 2 (G/A), 5 (A/G), 7 (T/C), and 26 (G/T), respectively, in this sequence when compared to XM_228753.8. These were further validated at both cDNA and gene level. These SNPs resulted in 2 amino acids changes, namely, glycine → arginine and valine → phenylalanine at protein level. Cloned hdac6 overexpressed in HEK293T cells demonstrated significant overexpression by IIF. Alpha-tubulin acetylation analysis of the overexpressed cell lysate demonstrated that the protein was bioactive. This is the first study showing the ontogenic expression in the testis and reporting experimentally validated sequence of rat HDAC6 and its structural and functional annotation in silico. This sequence has been submitted to GenBank (Accession number Rattus KY009929.1).