{"doi":"10.17615/wz02-vr18","title":"Endocrine Regulation of Male Fertility by the Skeleton","abstract":"Although the endocrine capacity of bone is widely recognized, interactions between bone and the reproductive system have until now focused on the gonads as a regulator of bone remodeling. We now show that in males, bone acts as a regulator of fertility. Using co-culture assays, we demonstrate that osteoblasts are able to induce testosterone production by the testes, while they fail to influence estrogen production by the ovaries. Analyses of cell-specific loss- and gain-of-function models reveal that the osteoblast-derived hormone osteocalcin performs this endocrine function. By binding to a G-protein coupled receptor expressed in the Leydig cells of the testes, osteocalcin regulates in a CREB-dependent manner the expression of enzymes required for testosterone synthesis, promoting germ cell survival. This study expands the physiological repertoire of osteocalcin, and provides the first evidence that the skeleton is an endocrine regulator of reproduction.","journal":"Carolina Digital Repository (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)","year":2020,"id":112142,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":4,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9545,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2020-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":531447,"name":"Grzegorz Sumara","orcid":"0000-0003-1502-6265","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":531448,"name":"Louis Hermo","orcid":"0000-0001-7138-7482","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":532353,"name":"Charles E. Smith","orcid":null,"position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":531449,"name":"Olga Sumara","orcid":"0000-0002-0845-3720","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":531450,"name":"Bryan L. Roth","orcid":"0000-0001-8632-7503","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":531451,"name":"Haixin Chang","orcid":"0000-0001-9621-4457","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":531452,"name":"Franck Oury","orcid":"0000-0003-0562-9900","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":531453,"name":"Patricia Ducy","orcid":"0000-0002-9551-2193","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":276902,"name":"Gérard Karsenty","orcid":"0000-0002-9253-7627","position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":497947,"name":"Mathieu Ferron","orcid":"0000-0002-5858-2686","position":10,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":531446,"name":"Susan S. Suárez","orcid":"0000-0003-2989-8320","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":0,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:13:13.874980Z","pmid":null,"pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}