Protein tyrosine phosphorylation during capacitation in sperm of a rare red deer, Tarim wapiti (Cervus elaphus yarkandensis)

High efficiency of in vitro capacitation of deer sperm has not yet been achieved as low sperm penetration rates were reported in in vitro fertilization studies. Our main goal in this study was to identify the changes of frozen-thawed sperm of the rare red deer Tarim wapiti (Cervus elaphus yarkandensis) and detect the effect of bovine serum albumin (BSA), serum, and heparin on the protein tyrosine phosphorylation of frozen-thawed sperm. The frozen-thawed sperm of Tarim wapiti was suspended in improved modified tyrode-albumin-lactate-pyruvate medium and cultured in 5% CO2 at 38.5 °C, and the status of protein tyrosine phosphorylation of sperm was detected by Western blotting. Although the results showed that the type number and expression of protein tyrosine phosphorylation of frozen-thawed wapiti sperm were decreased, the tyrosine-phosphorylated proteins such as 10, 14, 40, 47, and 55 kDa were increased significantly during the process of capacitation culture (1-2 h). In addition, tyrosine-phosphorylated proteins were promoted by BSA rather than serum, and estrus sheep serum (ESS) rather than estrus deer serum. When ESS and heparin were used together at 4 h after capacitation, four main tyrosine phosphorylation proteins (10 ± 2, 14 ± 2, 25 ± 3, and 47 ± 3 kDa) had a significantly higher expression than that at 2 h after capacitation. We demonstrated that these proteins were involved in wapiti sperm in vitro capacitation, heparin in the incubation media was necessary for the capacitation and tyrosine phosphorylation protein was promoted by ESS.