Henrike Krenz

Universitätsklinikum Münster | UKM · Institut für Medizinische Informatik

The process of spermatogenesis—when germ cells differentiate into sperm—is tightly regulated, and misregulation in gene expression is likely to be involved in the physiopathology of male infertility. The testis is one of the most transcriptionally rich tissues; nevertheless, the specific gene expression changes occurring during spermatogenesis are...

Cell differentiation processes are highly dependent on cell stage-specific gene expression, including timely production of alternatively spliced transcripts. One of the most transcriptionally rich tissues is the testis, where the process of spermatogenesis, or generation of male gametes, takes place. To date, germ cell-specific transcriptome dynami...

Rationale Primary ciliary dyskinesia (PCD) is a heterogeneous, multisystem disorder characterized by defective ciliary beating. Diagnostic guidelines of the American Thoracic Society (ATS) and European Respiratory Society (ERS) recommend measurement of nasal nitric oxide (nNO) for PCD diagnosis. Several studies demonstrated low nNO-production rates...

Introduction and Objectives About 30-75% of infertile men are diagnosed with idiopathic infertility, thereby lacking major causative factors to explain their impaired fertility status. In this study, we used a large cohort of idiopathic infertile men to determine whether subgroups could be identified by an unbiased clustering approach and whether u...

Background Due to the highly variable clinical phenotype, Klinefelter Syndrome (KS) is underdiagnosed. Objective Assessment of supervised machine learning (sML)-based prediction models for identification of KS among azoospermic patients, and comparison to expert clinical evaluation. Materials and methods Retrospective patient data (karyotype, age...

Study question: How can one design and implement a system that provides a comprehensive overview of research results in the field of epi-/genetics of male infertility and germ cells? Summary answer: Working at the interface of literature search engines and raw data repositories, the newly developed Male Fertility Gene Atlas (MFGA) provides a sys...

The sperm-specific CatSper channel controls the influx of Ca2+ into the flagellum and, thereby, the swimming behavior of sperm. A hallmark of human CatSper is its polymodal activation by membrane voltage, intracellular pH, and oviductal hormones. Whether CatSper is also activated by signaling pathways involving an increase of cAMP and ensuing activ...

Male infertility affects ∼7% of men, but its causes remain poorly understood. The most severe form is non-obstructive azoospermia (NOA), which is, in part, caused by an arrest at meiosis. So far, only a few validated disease-associated genes have been reported. To address this gap, we performed whole-exome sequencing in 58 men with unexplained meio...

Male infertility affects ~7% of men, but its causes remain poorly understood. The most severe form is non-obstructive azoospermia (NOA), which is, in part, caused by an arrest at meiosis, but so far only few validated causal genes have been reported. To address this gap, we performed whole exome sequencing in 58 men with unexplained meiotic arrest...

Background: A genetic variant within the FSHB gene can deviate FSH action on spermatogenesis. The c.-211G > T FSHB single nucleotide polymorphism impacts FSHB transcription and biosynthesis due to interference with the LHX3 transcription factor binding. This SNP was previously shown to be strongly associated with lowered testicular volume, reduced...

Interconnecting results of previous OMICs studies is of major importance for identifying novel underlying causes of male infertility. To date, information can be accessed mainly through literature search engines and raw data repositories. However, both have limited capacity in identifying relevant publications based on aggregated research results e...

Male infertility affects ~7% of men in Western societies, but its causes remain poorly understood. The most clinically severe form of male infertility is non-obstructive azoospermia (NOA), which is, in part, caused by an arrest at meiosis, but so far only few genes have been reported to cause germ cell arrest in males. To address this gap, whole ex...

Hydrocephalus is one of the most prevalent form of developmental central nervous system (CNS) malformations. Cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) flow depends on both heartbeat and body movement. Furthermore, it has been shown that CSF flow within and across brain ventricles depends on cilia motility of the ependymal cells lining the brain ventricles, which p...