Latest Spermatozoon Stories

BOGOTA, Colombia, Sept. 3, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Water buffalo breeding, an industry that actually uses artificial insemination, started using a new variant of the procedure in which the sex of the offspring can be chosen and it is called "Sexed Semen." This experience had never been used for the water buffalo species until this year, when Colbufalos, a company dedicated to buffalo breeding, located in Cordoba-Colombia, and led by Juan Gonzalo Angel, obtained the first successful...

Connie K. Ho for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online Sperm cells can look the same with a similar tadpole appearance. However, the cells showcase differences among the genes. Recently, researchers were able to capture an image of the varieties among genes which they say is particularly helpful in understanding the genome and male fertility. The research is featured in the July 20 edition of Cell, a Cell Press journal. The scientists believe that the methods used could help researchers...

Male contraception may be a possibility thanks in part to a discovery of a new key reproductive gene critical for production of healthy sperm, suggests Scottish scientists credited with the discovery. Researchers from Edinburgh University are hopeful their study, which involved mice, could lead to a new type of male birth control that doesn’t disrupt the production of hormones, something which often causes side effects such as mood swings. The researchers found that a gene known as...

(Ivanhoe Newswire) - A new type of male contraceptive could be created thanks to the discovery of a key gene essential for sperm development. This could lead to alternatives to the conventional male contraceptives which rely on the production of hormones, such as testerone. Research led by the University of Edinburgh, shows how the gene Katnal1 is critical to enable sperm maturity in the testes. If scientists can regulate Katnal1 in the testes, they could prevent sperm completely maturing,...

Scientists at the Universities of Birmingham and Warwick have shed new light on how sperm navigate the female reproductive tract, 'crawling' along the channel walls and swimming around corners; with frequent collisions. Research results published today (Tuesday May 8, 2012) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States (PNAS) provide fresh insight into how sperm might find their way to the egg that will help to inform future innovation in the struggle to treat...

Experts from Durham University have identified a new gene that could help the development of fertility treatments in humans in the future. Scientists from Durham University, UK, and Osaka University, Japan, looking at fertility in mice, have discovered for the first time that the gene, which makes a protein called PDILT, enables sperm to bind to an egg, a process essential to fertilization. The team found that when the gene was 'switched off' in male mice, less than three per cent of...

Stem cells provide a recurring topic among the scientific presentations at the Genetics Society of America's 53rd Annual Drosophila Research Conference, March 7-11 at the Sheraton Chicago Hotel & Towers. Specifically, researchers are trying to determine how, within organs, cells specialize while stem cells maintain tissues and enable them to repair damage and respond to stress or aging. Four talks, one on Thursday morning and three on Sunday morning, present variations on this theme....

The speed at which the calcium concentration in the cell changes controls the swimming behavior of sperm. They can calculate the calcium dynamics and react accordingly. Sperm have only one aim: to find the egg. The egg supports sperm in their quest by emitting attractants that induce changes in the calcium level inside sperm. Calcium ions determine the beating pattern of the sperm tail which enables sperm to steer. Together with colleagues from the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of...

It had long been assumed that the human sperm cell’s mission in life ended once it had transferred its freight of parental DNA to the egg. More recently however, other components of sperm have been implicated in fertilization, and perhaps even in subsequent embryonic development. In a new study appearing in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, Timothy Karr, a researcher at Arizona State University’s Biodesign Institute, along with colleagues from the Universities of Cambridge and...

Sperm cannot detect smells. According to a 2003 study by German and American scientists, a component of the Lily of the Valley scent known as Bourgeonal alters the calcium balance of human sperm and attracts the sperm. The “Lily of the Valley phenomenon” – also the title of a book about smelling – was born as a result of this discovery that sperm act as swimming olfactory cells which follow a “scent trail” laid by the egg. However, a detailed explanation for the Lily of the...