In the letter by Brenker et al. (1), the authors assessed actions of various steroids toward the human calcium channel of sperm (CatSper). The experiments, carried out with calcium imaging, are minimally supplemented by electrophysiology. The authors show that all tested steroids activate CatSper with different efficiencies. However, the plant triterpenoids pristimerin and lupeol fail to interf...

putative calcium channel specific to sperm tails may be the best target yet for a male contraceptive. The protein, dubbed CatSper, was discovered in a homology search by David Clapham and colleagues of Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA. CatSper looks like a calcium channel, although Clapham could not detect a calcium current in transfected cells, probably because another component of the chann...

putative calcium channel specific to sperm tails may be the best target yet for a male contraceptive. The protein, dubbed CatSper, was discovered in a homology search by David Clapham and colleagues of Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA. CatSper looks like a calcium channel, although Clapham could not detect a calcium current in transfected cells, probably because another component of the chann...

The molecular mechanisms underlying Ca(2+) entry into sperm are now much more well defined thanks to direct recordings of mature sperm cells. This article reviews the function of a sperm-specific ion channel, CatSper. CatSpers have a clearly defined function in sperm's hyperactivated motility and are essential for male fertility. We propose that physiological stimuli such as zona pellucida and ...

The cation channel of sperm (CatSper) protein family plays important roles in male reproduction and infertility. The four members of this family are expressed exclusively in the testis and are localized differently in sperm. To investigate the effects of Panax ginseng treatment on the expression of CatSper genes and sperm hyperactivation in male mice, sperm motility and CatSper gene expression ...

BACKGROUND CatSper genes are a novel family of four sperm-specific calcium channels, which indicate testis-specific expression patterns. Despite the crucial role of CatSper genes in the male reproduction, very little is known about the factors that regulate their expression. OBJECTIVE The objective of this study was to investigate the effects of vitamin E treatment on the expression of CatSpe...

A remarkable advance in sperm physiology has recently been published in Nature. Two groups using patch clamping techniques on human sperm have solved a mystery about the sperm cell that has puzzled both andrologists and those involved in nongenomic cellular signalling for over 20 years. In these papers, Lishko and Strunker independently demonstrate that the universal characteristic effect of pr...

Spermatozoa must leave one organism, navigate long distances, and deliver their paternal DNA into a mature egg. For successful navigation and delivery, a sperm-specific calcium channel is activated in the mammalian flagellum. The genes encoding this channel (CatSpers) appear first in ancient uniflagellates, suggesting that sperm use adaptive strategies developed long ago for single-cell navigat...

introduction: recently, a novel gene was cloned and characterized named catsper, which codes for a unique ca2+ channel that is expressed excludively in the testis. it has crucial role in sperm motility, sperm penetration into the ovum and ultimately male fertility. in the present study, we have evaluated the expression of this gene at different ages of mouse by semi-quantitative rt-pcr. materia...

OBJECTIVE CatSper is a voltage-sensitive calcium channel that is specifically expressed in the testis and it has a significant role in sperm performance. CatSper (1-4) ion channel subunit genes, causes sperm cell hyperactivation and male fertility. In this study, we have explored targeting of the extracellular loop as an approach for the generation of antibodies with the potential ability to bl...