p-Aminobenzamidine-sensitive acrosomal protease(s) other than acrosin serve the sperm penetration of the egg zona pellucida in mouse

It has been reported that a significant delay in protein dispersal from the acrosomal matrix is observed in wild-type sperm by adding p-aminobenzamidine, a trypsin/acrosin inhibitor, to the incubation medium. The pattern of this delayed release was similar to that of the acrosin-deficient mutant mouse sperm (Yamagata et al., J. Biol. Chem., 273, 10470-4, 1998). In the present study, no further delay in protein dispersal was found when the acrosin-deficient sperm were treated with p-aminobenzamidine, indicating that among the p-aminobenzamidine-sensitive protease(s) only acrosin may function to accelerate this process. Although the acrosin-deficient sperm penetrated the zona pellucida (Baba et al., J. Biol. Chem., 269, 31845-9, 1994), the addition of p-aminobenzamidine to the fertilisation medium caused a significant inhibition of fertilisation in vitro. This indicates that there is a p-aminobenzamidine-sensitive protease(s) other than acrosin participating in the zona penetration step. Indeed, we demonstrated that a non-acrosin protease with a size of 42 kDa was present in the supernatant of the acrosome-reacted sperm suspension. The enzyme was inhibited by p-aminobenzamidine, diisopropyl fluorophosphate and N alpha-tosyl-L-lysine chloromethyl ketone, and was apparently activated by acrosin.