From infertile male patients with defective sperm motility, we identified a splice site variant of LRRC23. Here, we report that a leucine-rich repeat-containing protein, LRRC23, is an RS3 head component essential for its head assembly and flagellar motility in mammalian spermatozoa. Despite the cell type specificity of RS3 substructures, their molecular components remain largely unknown. Repeated RS1, RS2, and RS3 couple the central pair to modulate ciliary and flagellar motility.
Radial spokes (RS) are T-shaped multiprotein complexes on the axonemal microtubules.
