Abstract: Objective To systematically characterize the dynamic expression pattern, stage specificity and co-expression pattern of RNA-binding protein (RBPs) and to predict their potential regulatory role in mouse spermatogenesis. Methods The whole transcriptome sequencing data of six spermatogenic cells types were integrated for analyzing the differentially expressed RBPs during spermatogenesis;STEM was used to analyze the dynamic expression pattern of RBPs; WGCNA was used to identify the RBPs co-expressed pattern; The differentially expressed and co-expressed RBPs were analyzed by the ClusterProfiler tool for GO function enrichment analysis. Results A total of 519 stage-specific RBPs were identified during spermatogenesis, and there were 7 dynamic expression patterns, of which RBPs at the meiotic stage accounted for the highest proportion; GO enrichment analysis showed that RBPs were mainly involved in the selective splicing, processing or translation of mRNA; WGCNA analysis showed that 246 RBPs were co-expressed, among which RBPs at the meiotic stage accounted for the highest proportion. Conclusions RBPs exhibit stage specificity and play a regulatory role in spermatogenesis with a coordinated expression mode. It functions mainly in the process of RNA processing or splicing in the early stage of spermatogenesis, and is have significant impact on the process of ribosome assembly or RNA translation in the later stage.

Key words: RNA-binding proteins, transcriptome, co-expression, spermatogenesis