Fig. 6

Rat PRDM9 affects postmeiotic development of round spermatids. a Examples of normal and defective spermatids from wild-type and Prdm9-deficient SHR males on PAS-H stained testicular sections. The means counted in mutant versus control in all 14 stages are in Fig. 5. b, c Increased apoptosis during postmeiotic development of Prdm9-deficient SHR testes. b Mean counts of apoptotic round spermatids per apoptotic tubule were scored from randomly chosen apoptotic tubules (18 to 32 per animal, total 221 tubules from 9 animals), plotted, and evaluated using LRM. The average counts of mutant and control samples were 1.1 ± 0.4 and 0.4 ± 0.2, respectively. c Round spermatids (RSP) were distinguished on neighboring TUNEL-DAPI and anti-PIWIL1-Hematoxylin-stained sections from spermatocytes (SC); representative images (the same tubule) are shown