A walnut supplement for a Western-style diet in men was shown to improve sperm motility, vitality, and morphology. To gain further insights into factors underlying this improvement, we administered a parallel walnut-enriched diet to mice [including those with a defect in sperm motility due to deletion of Plasma Membrane Ca2+-ATPase 4 (Pmca4-/- )] to determine if there is a similar improvement t...

In this study, certain enzymes in ram semen involved in reactive oxygen species elimination and their changes during the cryopreservation process were characterized in order to investigate the hypothesis that the antioxidant defense system is involved in the maintenance of frozen sperm quality. Glutathione reductase (GR), glutathione peroxidase (GPx), and superoxide dismutase (SOD) activities w...

The steps by which isolated populations acquire reproductive incompatibilities remain poorly understood. One potentially important process is postcopulatory sexual selection because it can generate divergence between populations in traits that influence fertilization success after copulation. Here we present a comprehensive analysis of this form of reproductive isolation by conducting reciproca...

Biological mixtures comprised of multiple individuals’ tissues or bodily fluids are commonly encountered and gathered during crime scene evidence collection. Sexual assault samples are one such mixture, usually comprised of epithelial cells and sperm. Sexual assault mixtures may contain a large amount of non-sperm cells in comparison to sperm cells. In such instances, it is imperative to separa...

Dietetic habits revealed significant effect on seminal plasma vitamin B12 levels. The mean values for seminal plasma vitamin B12 activity in lactovegetarians from normozoospermic, oligozoospermic and azoospermic groups are significantly lower than the corresponding mean values observed in the nonvegetarian subjects. The mean vitamin B12 content of seminal plasma in azoospermic group was distinc...

BACKGROUND Bovine BSP5 is a multifunctional protein primarily involved in sperm capacitation. BSP5 consists of long N-terminal part followed by two similar and highly conserved fibronectin type II domains designated A and B. METHODS In order to assess the role of these domains in the sperm binding and capacitation processes, we created recombinant individual domains (N, A, B), series of overl...

Caenorhabditis elegans hermaphrodites make first sperm, then oocytes. By contrast, animals homozygous for any of six loss-of-function mutations in the gene mog-1 (for masculinization of the germ line) make sperm continuously and do not switch into oogenesis. Therefore, in mog-1 mutants, germ cells that normally would become oocytes are transformed into sperm. By contrast, somatic sexual fates a...

One of the most important processes in fertilization is the fusion of egg and sperm; however, the molecular mechanisms involved in this process are not well understood. So far, using genetic approaches, only two proteins have been demonstrated to be necessary for this process: Izumo in sperm and CD9 in the egg. Here we demonstrate that sperm produced by Tssk6 (Sstk)-null mice present defects th...

To fertilize an oocyte, sperm must first undergo capacitation in which the sperm plasma membrane becomes hyperpolarized via activation of potassium (K+) channels and resultant K+ efflux. Sperm-specific SLO3 K+ channels are responsible for these membrane potential changes critical for fertilization in mouse sperm, and they are only sensitive to pH i However, in human sperm, the major K+ conducta...

correlation between breeding value of crude milk (cm) and energy-corrected milk (ecm) was studied based on a total of 774,013 test day records belongs to 88,456 first-parity holsteins dairy cattle calving during 1997-2009 in 165 herds (from six provinces). genetic analysis of the traits was carried out by a fixed regression test day model. in the model, effects of herd, calving year, production...