BACKGROUND Spermatozoa are extremely vulnerable to oxidative stress caused by the unbalance between concentrations of reactive oxygen species and antioxidant scavenging systems present inside the male reproductive tract. In spite of a large number of clinical studies that claimed the beneficial effects of antioxidant oral administration on sperm physiology and fertility, only a few studies were...

Postcopulatory adaptations that increase reproductive success compared to rivals, like the transfer of accessory gland products that promote paternity, are common when sperm competition occurs among males. In land snails, the dart shooting behavior and its adaptive significance, in promoting individual fitness through enhanced paternity of the successful dart shooter, have been considered such ...

Spermatozoon is a cell with a precious message to deliver: the paternal DNA. Its motility machinery must be working perfectly and it should be able to acquire fertilizing ability in order to accomplish this mission. Infertility touches 1 in 6 couples worldwide and in half of the cases the causes can be traced to men. A variety of conditions such as infections of the male genital tract, varicoce...

Identifying Intracellular Sperm Metabolites Using HR MAS NMR Jack Tristan Pearson, Steven Reynolds, Adriana Bucur, Allan Pacey, and Martyn Paley Human Metabolism, The University of Sheffield, Sheffield, South Yorkshire, United Kingdom, Cardiovascular Science, The University of Sheffield, Sheffield, South Yorkshire, United Kingdom Purpose: There have been numerous attempts to develop sperm funct...

during the recent decades, substantial changes are made in the borders and contents of physiology as a basic course for the students in medicine. here some strategies are presented to preserve the classical and integrative approaches in teaching physiology, while these approaches extent our knowledge to molecular, sub-cellular and cellular levels.

Improving reproductive performance of dairy cattle has become one of the major challenges of the dairy industry worldwide. Most studies have investigated cow fertility while bull fertility has received much less attention. However, there is growing evidence that the service sire represents an important source of variation for conception rate in dairy cattle. As such, the main objective of this ...

The expression of proteins in accessory sex gland fluid (AGF) of proven, high use mature Holstein bulls was evaluated. Thirty-seven bulls with documented fertility based on their non-return rates were studied. AGF was obtained by artificial vagina after bulls were surgically equipped with cannulae in the vasa deferentia. Samples of AGF were evaluated by two-dimensional SDS-PAGE, gels stained wi...

With the recognition, afforded by recent evolutionary science, that female infidelity was a recurrent feature of modern humans’ evolutionary history has come the development of a unique area in the study of human mating: sperm competition. A form of male–male postcopulatory competition, sperm competition occurs when the sperm of two or more males concurrently occupy the reproductive tract of a ...

The outcome of mate choice depends on complex interactions between males and females both before and after copulation. Although the competition between males for access to mates and premating choice by females are relatively well understood, the nature of interactions between cryptic female choice and male sperm competition within the female reproductive tract is less clear. Understanding the c...