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. 2024 Sep 30:15:1401326.
doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2024.1401326. eCollection 2024.

Seminal plasma microbiomes, sperm parameters, and cryopreservation in a healthy fertile population

Longlong Fu  1 , Yuanlei Lou  2 , Ying Guo  1 , Fang Zhou  1 , Jing Ma  3 , Shusong Wang  3 , Yiqun Gu  1 , Bin Fu  2 , Wenhong Lu  1
Affiliations

Seminal plasma microbiomes, sperm parameters, and cryopreservation in a healthy fertile population

Longlong Fu et al. Front Microbiol. .

Abstract

Background: Recent advances in microbiome research have revealed the presence of diverse microbial communities in human tissues previously thought to be sterile. The present study delves into the emerging field of seminal plasma microbiomics, examining the relationship between semen microbes and semen parameters and post-freezing tolerance.

Methods: The study involved a cohort of healthy fertility males and microbial genome analysis using 16S rRNA to characterize the microbial diversity of seminal plasma. Microbial diversity analysis identified unique amplicon sequence variants (ASVs) and genera dominant in seminal plasma. Spearman's correlation coefficient was used to assess the relationship between flora and semen parameters. A paired t-test was used to compare the changes in microbiome expression in seminal plasma before and after cryo-resuscitation.

Results: The relevant results show that the top five phyla in terms of abundance of seminal plasma microbiome were Firmicutes, Bacteroidota, Proteobacteria, Actinobacteriota, and Campylobacterota. Spearman correlation analysis highlighted the association between specific microbial species and semen parameters, between Porphyromonas_asaccharolytica and sperm concentration. Microbial changed significantly after cryo-resuscitation, affecting taxonomic units such as Campylobacter and Muribaculaceae, and KEGG enrichment analyses, suggesting that metabolic pathways are associated with sperm freezing. Eubacterium_coprostanoligenes and Eptoniphilus_duerdenii exhibited a potential impact, while Orynebacterium_tuberculostearicum demonstrated a positive correlation with the recovery rate of progressive motile sperm.

Conclusion: The semen of normal fertile individuals contains a microflora component that is closely related to semen quality, including the sperm's ability to withstand freezing.

Keywords: fertile; fertility; seminal plasma microbiomes; sperm cryopreservation and thawing; sperm parameters.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Distribution and diversity analysis of semen colonies of fertile men. (A) Histogram of the community structure of the 28 semen samples, before and after cryo-resuscitation (TOP15 is shown as an example). (B) TOP50/100 species evolutionary tree and ASV abundance plot. On the left is the evolutionary tree diagram with phylum as the gate information; on the right is the abundance plot corresponding to the abundance of ASVs in each sample on the left.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Legend of correlation between bacterial flora data with demographic and sperm parameters. (A) Heatmap of the correlation between bacterial flora and demographic. (B) Heatmap of the correlation between bacterial flora and semen parameters.
Figure 3
Figure 3
The correlation between bacterial flora data and the sperm cryopresevation (A) Top10 boxplot of the abundance of individual bacterial differential species in semen before and after cryo-resuscitation. (B) Bar graph of KEGG differential results, with bars showing the average abundance of pathways in each group. F, fresh semen; C, Cryo-resuscitated semen.
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