The mammalian spermatozoon has many cellular compartments, such as head and tail, permitting it to interact with the female reproductive tract and fertilize the egg. It acquires this fertilizing potential during transit through the epididymis, which secretes proteins that coat different sperm domains. Optimal levels of these proteins provide the spermatozoon with its ability to move to, bind to...

Background: Fertilization and fecundation obviously are the phenomenon in which several factors are involved. Sperm membranous proteins are a series of these important elements. CD9, an inner acrosomal membrane protein, is one of the tetraspanin members that involved in sperm-egg fusion. CD52, is a GPI anchor protein which is expressed in the epididymal cells and during passage of sperms throug...

Centrosome integrity is critically important for successful fertilization and embryo development. In humans, the sperm contributes the dominant centrosomal material containing centrioles and centrosomal components onto which oocyte centrosomal proteins assemble after sperm incorporation to form the sperm aster that is essential for uniting sperm and oocyte pronuclei. Increasingly, dysfunctional...

The cell-cell interactions that occur between sperm and egg involve not only the binding but also the fusion of the gamete plasma membranes. Numerous studies, carried out decades ago and more recently, have implicated several different molecules on both the sperm and egg as being involved in gamete membrane interactions. The sperm proteins that have received the most attention recently have hom...

Fertilization depends on cell surface recognition proteins that interact and thereby mediate binding and subsequent fusion of the sperm and egg. Overlapping complementary DNA's encoding the egg plasma membrane receptor for sperm from the sea urchin Strongylocentrotus purpuratus were cloned and sequenced. Analysis of the deduced primary structure suggests that the receptor is a transmembrane pro...

background: heat shock protein a2 (hspa2) is correlated with sperm maturity and function. therefore, dysfunctional expression of this gene results in abnormal spermatogenesis. on the other hand, dna damage in spermatozoa is considered to be an important cause of male infertility, and the presence of sperm with dna fragmentation and chromatin abnormalities in human ejaculates is well documented,...

Background ISTS defect in which sperm tail is short and fibrous sheath and axoneme are disorganized, is one of the syndromes that cause male infertility. Although a few studies have been done in this regard, its exact etiology in human is unclear yet. Four candidate genes causing ISTS are SPEF2, RABL2B, and A-kinas anchoring proteins genes (AKAP3 and AKAP4). Proteins which coded by SPEF2 and RA...

background: the availability of testis specific genes will be of help in choosing the most promising biomarkers for the detection of testicular sperm retrieval in patients with non-obstructive azoospermia (noa). testis specific chromodomain protein y 1 (cdy1) is a histone acetyltransferase which concentrates in the round spermatid nucleus, where histone hyperacetylation occurs and causes the re...

Spermatozoa generate reactive oxygen species (ROS) in physiological amounts which play a role in sperm functions during sperm capacitation acrosome reaction (AR) and oocyte fusion. In addition damaged sperm are likely to be the source of ROS. The most important ROS produced by human sperm are hydrogen peroxide superoxide anion and hydroxyl radicals. Besides human seminal plasma and sperm posses...