LAUSR

Diabetes mellitus has a deleterious effect on the male reproductive system, especially on sperm quality and spermatogenesis. Gynura procumbens (G. procumbens) is a traditional herb known for its ability to improve the fertility of diabetes-induced male rats. This study was designed to identify the differential expression of sperm proteins after treatment with G. procumbens aqueous extract on diabetes-induced male rats. The sperm proteome was profiled using label-free shotgun proteomics analysis. Sprague Dawley rats used in this study were divided randomly into four groups. One group was a normal control group (healthy rats), while the three other groups were induced with 50 mg/kg  bodyweight (BW) of streptozotocin (STZ) to emulate the diabetic condition. The diabetic rats were divided into negative control (non-treated diabetic), metformin-treated (positive control) and G. procumbens aqueous extract-treated (450 mg/kg BW) groups. Oral treatments were administered for 14 consecutive days before the rats were euthanized. Total sperm protein samples were extracted from the caudal epididymis and run through SDS-PAGE. Later, samples were digested using trypsin before liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (Thermo Orbitrap Fusion) analysis. The acquired data were processed using MaxQuant and Perseus software. The mass spectrometry proteomics data is available through ProteomeXchange Consortium via the PRIDE partner repository, with the dataset identifier PXD011373.