Sperm Physiological Response to Female Serum-Potential New Insights into the Reproductive Incompatibility Diagnostics

Abstract

Infertility is assumed to arise exclusively from male- and female-dependent pathological factors. However, recent studies have indicated that reproductive failure may also result from the reproductive incompatibility of the partners. Selection against such incompatibilities likely occurs via female-derived reproductive secretions, including follicular fluid (FF), that mediate gamete-level mate choice towards the sperm of specific males. To facilitate potential development of diagnostic tests for human reproductive incompatibility, we examined whether sperm physiological response to female serum indicate male-female compatibility in the presence of FF. We performed a full-factorial experiment, in which the sperm of 10 males were treated with the FF and serum of 6 healthy females. We found that sperm motility and viability in both biofluids were highly similar and that in 70% of the males, sperm serum treatment predicted male-female compatibility. We also identified male human leucocyte antigen (HLA) alleles and female (FF and serum) anti-HLA antibodies and tested whether the number of allele-antibody matches predict sperm physiological response to female fluids. However, no association was found between measured sperm traits and the number of allele-antibody matches. Overall, the present results may open novel possibilities for the future development of reproductive incompatibility tests and may pave the way towards more accurate infertility diagnostics and treatments.

Keywords: MHC; cryptic female choice; egg donor; fertilization; genetic compatibility; infertility; sexual selection; sperm function.

Figure 1

The effect of male:female interaction (combination) on the sperm swimming velocity (calculated on four replicate measurements per combination ± s.e.) at three different time points (60, 180, and 300 min) after the initiation of the follicular fluid or serum treatment. The data were standardized to a mean of 0 and a standard deviation of 1.