BACKGROUND Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), a class of the most ubiquitous environmental contaminants, may reduce male reproductive functions, but the data from human population studies are very limited. OBJECTIVES We designed this study to determine whether environmental exposure to PAHs contributes to the alteration in semen quality, sperm DNA damage, and apoptosis in the general ma...

We have yet to develop a fundamental understanding of the molecular complexities of human spermatozoa. This encompasses the unique packaging and structure of the sperm genome along with their paternally derived RNAs in preparation for their delivery to the egg. The diversity of these transcripts is vast, including several anti-sense molecules resembling known regulatory micro-RNAs. The field is...

The primary use of frozen semen has been for the treatment of male infertility, in which case a 'donor's' semen may be used for insemination independently of time and place. An increase in demand for semen by infertile couples, who represent about 30 per cent of all marriages in the United States, was a contributing factor to the rapid growth of commercial semen banking. Another factor was the ...

The members of the ADAM (a disintegrin and metalloprotease) family are membrane-anchored multi-domain proteins that play prominent roles in male reproduction. ADAM2, which was one of the first identified ADAMs, is the best studied ADAM in reproduction. In the male germ cells of mice, ADAM2 and other ADAMs form complexes that contribute to sperm-sperm adhesion, sperm-egg interactions, and the mi...

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...

Selection of high-quality sperm is crucial to assisted reproduction. However, conventional clinical methods for selection are manual and prone operator errors. This article presents ‘sperm syringe', a scalable technology that mimics the highly parallelized 3D process in vivo via network 560 microchannels select sperm. Sperm syringe retrieves more than 41% healthy from initial sample under 15 mi...

We recently identified the DPY19L2 gene as the main genetic cause of human globozoospermia. Non-genetically characterized cases of globozoospermia were associated with DNA alterations, suggesting that DPY19L2-dependent globozoospermia may be associated with poor DNA quality. However the origins of such defects have not yet been characterized and the consequences on the quality of embryos genera...

Human papillomaviruses (HPVs) are agents of the most common sexually transmitted diseases in females and males. Precise data about the presence, mechanism of infection and clinical significance of HPV in the male reproductive tract and especially in sperm are not available. Here we show that HPV can infect human sperm, it localizes at the equatorial region of sperm head through interaction betw...

Infertility is an important aspect of human and animal reproduction and still presents with much etiological ambiguity. As fifty percent of infertility is related to the male partner, molecular investigations on sperm and seminal plasma can lead to new knowledge on male infertility. Several comparisons between fertile and infertile human and other species sperm proteome have shown the existence...

Cholesterol is a main lipid component of sperm cell that is essential for sperm membrane fluidity, capacitation, and acrosomal reaction. Recent data obtained in bovine sperm showed that sperm capacitation is associated to the formation of oxysterols, oxidized products of cholesterol. The aim of this study was to profile oxysterol content in human semen, and to investigate their potential role i...