The male sterility and histoincompatibility ( mshi) mutation in mice is a natural variant of microtubule-associated protein 7 ( Mtap7)

Males homozygous for the mouse male sterility and histoincompatibility ( mshi) mutation exhibit small testes and produce no sperm. In addition, mshi generates an “antigen-loss” histoincompatibility barrier, such that homozygous mutants reject skin grafts from wild type co-isogenic BALB/cByJ donors. To facilitate the molecular characterization of the pleiotropic mshi mutation, we genetically mapped mshi into a 0.68 megabasepair region which contains fewer than 10 candidate genes. Complementation testing showed that one of these, Mtap7, is disrupted in mshi mice. Sequence analysis has revealed a 13 kilobasepair deletion in BALB/cByJ- mshi/J mice that begins in Intron 10–11 of Mtap7, and ends less than 2000 base pairs downstream of the wild type gene. Analysis of the mutant cDNA predicts that Mtap7 mshi encodes a 457 amino acid protein, the first 423 of which are identical to wild type, and the last 34 of which are due to aberrant mRNA splicing with two cryptic exons in the Mtap7 to P04Rik intergenic region. This molecular assignment for the mshi mutation further supports an essential role for microtubule stabilization in spermatogenesis and indicates a new role in allograft transplantation.