The presence of neural tissue and smooth muscle elements in the vicinity of the oviductal sperm storage tubules at the uterovaginal junction was assessed by several modes of light microscopy. Isolated neurones and small ganglia were identified in the uterovaginal junction of the turkey oviduct. The nerve cell bodies were observed in the tunica mucosa by bright field microscopy. Immunoreactivity...

Naturally-occurring antisperm antibodies in men are a relative cause of infertility, being the fertility impairment related with the degree of sperm autoimmunization. The impairment of sperm penetration through the cervical mucus represents the best established mechanism of the antibody interference with fertility. Another mechanism may involve complement-mediated sperm injury and opsonizing ef...

BACKGROUND In human and rodents, sperm-zona pellucida binding is mediated by a sperm surface Galactosyltransferase that recognizes N-Acetylglucosamine residues on a glycoprotein ZPC. In large domestic mammals, the role of these molecules remains unclear: in bovine, they are involved in sperm-zona pellucida binding, whereas in porcine, they are not necessary. Our aim was to clarify the role of G...

A rabbit antibody to mouse 3T3 cell fibronectin was used in conjunction with a fluorescein-tagged second antibody to detect fibronectin-like activity on the surface of rabbit spermatozoa. Only ejaculated sperm displayed an intense and highly localized fluorescence over the acrosomal region. Cauda epididymal sperm of the rabbit as well as several other species did not exhibit any reaction. The f...

A quantitative assay was developed to study the interaction of Xenopus laevis sperm and eggs. Using this assay it was found that sperm bound in approximately equal numbers to the surface of both hemispheres of the unfertilized egg, but not to the surface of the fertilized egg. To understand the molecular basis of sperm binding to the egg vitelline envelope (VE), a competition assay was used and...

LB5 antibody was selected from a monoclonal antibody (mAb) library directed against human sperm proteins. LB5 mAb detected the corresponding protein SOB3 in the neck region and the flagellum of most live ejaculated sperm while it labelled, in addition, the acrosome of about 10-20% of spermatozoa. The percentage of LB5 acrosome-stained sperm was significantly correlated with the percentages of e...

Previously, we reported that glycine initiates the in vitro acrosome reaction (AR) of porcine and human sperm by a mechanism that includes the glycine receptor/Cl- channel (GlyR) and that this receptor/channel is required for the zona-pellucida-initiated AR. Because mouse sperm are important tools in the study of fertilization, we investigated whether glycine initiated the mouse sperm AR and wh...

OBJECTIVE To investigate the expression of oocyte-specific linker histone protein (hH1FOO) in human ovaries and its incorporation into sperm chromatin after intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI). DESIGN Laboratory study. SETTING University hospital. PATIENT(S) Human ovarian tissues were obtained from patients at oophorectomy. Human oocytes and embryos were obtained from infertile patien...

The purpose of the present study was twofold: 1) to determine if antibodies raised against ubiquitin would recognize antigens associated with the porcine cytoplasmic droplet (CD), and 2) to determine if the same antibody would identify ubiquitinated substrates on the surface of morphologically abnormal boar spermatozoa. Permeabilization with the detergent Triton X-100 (0.05%) showed virtually a...

We have shown previously that the regulatory subunit (RII) of a type II cAMP-dependent protein kinase is an integral component of the mammalian sperm flagellum (Horowitz, J.A., H. Toeg, and G.A. Orr. 1984. J. Biol. Chem. 259:832-838; Horowitz, J.A., W. Wasco, M. Leiser, and G.A. Orr. 1988. J. Biol. Chem. 263:2098-2104). The subcellular localization of this flagellum-associated RII in bovine cau...