Since all domestic turkeys are produced through artificial insemination, a measurable sperm characteristic that would be predictive of fertility would allow for the culling of poor males, resulting in improved reproductive efficiency. The sperm mobility test (SMT), which quantifies sperm penetration into an Accudenz solution, has been shown to correlate highly with fertilization potential of in...

Testicular protein Tpx-1, also known as CRISP-2, is a cysteine-rich secretory protein specifically expressed in the male reproductive tract. Since the information available on the human protein is limited to the identification and expression of its gene, in this work we have studied the presence and localization of human Tpx-1 (TPX1) in sperm, its fate after capacitation and acrosome reaction (...

In order to fertilize the oocyte, sperm must undergo a series of biochemical changes in the female reproductive tract, known as capacitation. Once capacitated, spermatozoon can bind to the zona pellucida of the egg and undergo the acrosome reaction (AR), a process that enables its penetration and fertilization of the oocyte. Important processes that characterize sperm capacitation are actin pol...

This work assesses the present knowledge on Pacific oyster sperm biology in comparison to two marine fish species (turbot and seabass) whose sperm characteristics are well described. Sperm morphology mainly differs by the presence of an acrosome in Pacific oyster which is absent in both fish species. In turbot as in Pacific oyster, a sperm ‘maturation process’ along the genital tract is observe...

I n mammals and the many other animals in which fertilization involves the establishment of a penetration path through the egg coat, at the apex of the sperm head lies the acrosome— a membrane-limited organelle that houses a complex of enzymes. For fertilization to occur, spermatozoa must first undergo the acrosome reaction (AR), which involves point fusions between the outer acrosomal and over...

The eggs of Arbacia and starfish contained about 70 and 25 micrograms of pyruvate per gm. of dry cells respectively. Arbacia eggs utilized added pyruvate, although the O(2) uptake did not increase. On fertilization the utilization of pyruvate increased sevenfold. This pyruvate seems to be metabolized, as in other cells, with diphosphothiamine as coenzyme. The diphosphothiamine content of fertil...

The penetration of the zona pellucida is a crucial step during fertilization. Spermatozoa that are unable to recognize and bind to the zona pellucida glycoproteins or respond to the zona pellucida by undergoing the acrosome reaction fail to fertilize the egg. In most mammalian species, after entering the fallopian tube sperm are stored in the isthmic part of the oviduct under conditions that ma...

The post-coital test evaluates the penetration of spermatozoa into cervical mucus; it relies on subjective measurements and therefore lacks precision. Enzymatic liquefaction of cervical mucus allows sperm concentration to be measured in post-coital test samples, but the reliability of such measurements is not known. Donor cervical mucus was used as a model to test the accuracy and sensitivity o...

We present a fast penetration depth estimation algorithm between deformable polyhedral objects. We assume the continuum of non-rigid models are discretized using standard techniques, such as finite element or finite difference methods. As the objects deform, the distance fields are deformed accordingly to estimate penetration depth, allowing enforcement of non-penetration constraints between tw...