Behavioral mechanisms of mammalian sperm guidance
نویسندگان
چکیده
In mammals, sperm guidance in the oviduct appears essential for successful sperm arrival at the oocyte. Hitherto, three different potential sperm guidance mechanisms have been recognized: thermotaxis, rheotaxis, and chemotaxis, each of them using specific stimuli - a temperature gradient, fluid flow, and a chemoattractant gradient, respectively. Here, we review sperm behavioral in these mechanisms and indicate commonalities and differences between them.
منابع مشابه
Chemosensory Ca2+ dynamics correlate with diverse behavioral phenotypes in human sperm.
In the female reproductive tract, mammalian sperm undergo a regulated sequence of prefusion changes that "prime" sperm for fertilization. Among the least understood of these complex processes are the molecular mechanisms that underlie sperm guidance by environmental chemical cues. A "hard-wired" Ca(2+) signaling strategy that orchestrates specific motility patterns according to given functional...
متن کاملFluid flow and sperm guidance: a simulation study of hydrodynamic sperm rheotaxis.
How does a sperm find its way? The study of guidance cues has fascinated sperm biologists and in particular the prospect of rheotaxis, that is a fluid flow orienting the direction of sperm swimming, has been the subject of extensive recent study, as readily motivated by the prospect that such guidance may be active in the mammalian female reproductive tract. For instance, it has been hypothesiz...
متن کاملBehavioral mechanism of human sperm in thermotaxis: a role for hyperactivation.
STUDY QUESTION What is the behavioral mechanism underlying the response of human spermatozoa to a temperature gradient in thermotaxis? SUMMARY ANSWER Human spermatozoa swim up a temperature gradient by modulating their speed and frequencies of hyperactivation events and turns. WHAT IS KNOWN ALREADY Capacitated human spermatozoa are capable of thermotactically responding to a temperature gra...
متن کاملA Heterogeneous Mixture of F-Series Prostaglandins Promotes Sperm Guidance in the Caenorhabditis elegans Reproductive Tract
The mechanisms that guide motile sperm through the female reproductive tract to oocytes are not well understood. We have shown that Caenorhabditis elegans oocytes synthesize sperm guiding F-series prostaglandins from polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA) precursors provided in yolk lipoprotein complexes. Here we use genetics and electrospray ionization tandem mass spectrometry to partially delineat...
متن کاملEnergy Management of Mature Mammalian Spermatozoa
The ultimate goal of a mammalian sperm is the transmission of paternal genome to the next generation. To achieve this goal, mammalian spermatozoa are very specialized cells, which have a precise cellular design in dependence on the evolutionary reproductive strategy chosen by each species. This specificity is a very important point, since aspects such as the exact point of ejaculate deposition,...
متن کامل