Artificial insemination (AI) of pigs has grown exponentially as reproductive technology with more than a dozen of the top pig producers of the world inseminating >95% of the females in production schemes, at either nucleus or multiplication herds. Above 98% of AIs still concern liquid semen, often inseminated just within a day or maximum two from collected and extended, and most often using cer...

Laser trapping in the near infrared regime is a noninvasive and microfluidic-compatible biomedical tool. This chapter examines the use of optical trapping as a quantitative measure of sperm motility. The single point gradient trap is used to directly measure the swimming forces of sperm from several different species. These forces could provide useful information about the overall sperm motilit...

Apoptosis has been recognized as a cause of sperm death during cryopreservation and a cause of infertility in humans, however there is no data on its role in sperm death during conservation in refrigeration; autophagy has not been described to date in mature sperm. We investigated the role of apoptosis and autophagy during cooled storage of stallion spermatozoa. Samples from seven stallions wer...

The aim of this prospective randomized study was to determine if the use of intracytoplasmic morphologically selected sperm injection (IMSI) is associated with gender incidence. Couples who underwent IVF-preimplantation genetic screening (PGS) cycles, as a result of advanced maternal age, were randomly allocated into two groups: intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI; n=80) or intracytoplasmic ...

A great deal of attention has recently been given to the essential role of polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) of sperm membranes. We studied the fatty acid composition of the immature germ cells (IGC) and of the sperm populations separated by Percoll gradient in the ejaculate of normozoospermic patients. Fatty acid pattern was analysed by combined gas chromatography-mass spectrometry on a capil...

REASONS FOR PERFORMING STUDY The increasing use of modern reproductive techniques in human medicine has led to a higher demand for isolation of motile sperm. Several of these isolation techniques have been adapted for veterinary use and can be applied for the selection of a superior sperm sample from stallion semen. Until recently a major disadvantage of such isolation techniques was the limita...

Objective: To compare two suites of culture media (one with HSA and one protein-free (PF) supplemented with methylcellulose) for washing human sperm in IVF. Methods: Semen samples (n = 41) underwent parallel density gradient preparation using PF or HSA-supplemented culture medium and subsequent yield, survival, morphology and motility were compared. Results: The PF medium resulted in a signific...

BACKGROUND Sperm cell death appears to be a cause of male infertility. The objective of this study was to determine the most reliable method for the evaluation of sperm quality in semen samples during sperm preparation for IVF. METHODS Conventional analysis of semen samples was compared with several cytofluorometric methods detecting death-associated changes. Neat semen from infertile patient...

Cellular membranes are heterogeneous, and this has a great impact on cellular function. Despite the central role of membrane functions in multiple cellular processes in sperm, their molecular mechanisms are poorly understood. Membrane rafts are specific membrane domains enriched in cholesterol, ganglioside GM1, and functional proteins, and they are involved in the regulation of a variety of cel...

BACKGROUND Features of both apoptosis and necrosis have been reported in ejaculated human spermatozoa. This study examines the relative contribution of these two modes of cell death to the demise of these terminally differentiated cells. METHODS Sperm fractions were prepared from aliquots of semen samples from young normozoospermic donors by simple washing from seminal plasma, by discontinuou...