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Comment
. 2020 Feb 27:9:e55396.
doi: 10.7554/eLife.55396.

Stopping sperm in their tracks

Luke L McGoldrick  1 , Jean-Ju Chung  1   2
Affiliations
Comment

Stopping sperm in their tracks

Luke L McGoldrick et al. Elife. .

Abstract

An automated high-throughput platform can screen for molecules that change the motility of sperm cells and their ability to fertilize.

Keywords: acrosome reaction; contraception; developmental biology; high-throughput screening; human; human biology; infertility; medicine; motility; sperm.

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Conflict of interest statement

LM, JC No competing interests declared

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.. Automated targeting of sperm motility and acrosome reaction with small molecules.
Sperm are robotically allocated into wells (~10,000 cells/well) in a 384-well plate (top left); each well contains a different small molecule at a concentration of ~6 μM. The insets show KF-4939, an anti-platelet agent, binding to sperm cells. After incubation with the small molecules, sperm motility is imaged and assessed (middle left). Subsequently, the same sperm are mixed with two tags, peanut agglutinin (PNA; green) and propidium iodide (Pi; red), that emit fluorescence when attached to cells. Sperm were analyzed with a technique called flow cytometry (top right): PNA binding to a sperm cell indicates that the cell has undergone the acrosome reaction, while Pi only binds to dead cells. Most sperm cells do not bind to PNA or Pi, some bind to one but not the other, and some bind to both (bottom right).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Comment on

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