Deep Proteome Profiling of Semen of Indian Indigenous Malnad Gidda (Bos indicus) Cattle

Malnad Gidda is a dwarf indigenous cattle breed of India, which is known for its uniqueness of calving every year under a low input grazing system of rearing. Bulls of Malnad Gidda are known to be highly fertile even in stress conditions. However, the proteomic profiling of semen of this breed has not been investigated so far, which might provide a platform for a better understanding of its semen quality and male fertility. Therefore, we made an effort to characterize and quantify the proteome of seminal plasma and spermatozoa components of Malnad Gidda semen using a high-resolution mass spectrometry platform. We identified 2814 proteins from spermatozoa and 1974 proteins from the seminal plasma of this breed. Furthermore, >90% of proteins from each fraction were quantified using the intensity-based absolute quantification. We observed signal peptides in 33% of seminal plasma proteins, indicating their secretory nature. Gene Ontology analysis revealed their involvement in cytoskeletal assembly associated with sperm head, sperm motility, acrosome reaction, seminal plasma binding, and spermatogenesis-associated protein. An in-depth proteome profiling of semen of a unique indigenous cattle breed of India was carried out. Our findings could provide a reference for further studies on sperm functions, semen quality, and reproductive health of Bos indicus cattle. Mass spectrometry data generated in this study is deposited and publicly made available through ProteomeXchange Consortium via the PRIDE partner repository with the dataset identifier PXD014172.