Teams of sperm swim more smoothly against the current frontiersin
However, teams of unattached sperm do not outrun the solo swimmers, as they do in other examples of group behavior. For instance, the wood mouse sperm head has a hook that physically attaches it to other sperm, linking hundreds to thousands in a sort of sperm train that is speedier than lone sperm.
They found three potential biological benefits to sperm clustering, based on the strength of the current that the sperm must travel against. First, in the absence of flow, clustered sperm seem to change direction less frequently and swim in a straighter line. Against a mild to intermediate flow, clustered sperm are better aligned, like a school of fish heading upstream.
"In general, I would say that identification of motility advantages that are not speed enhancement is not usual, and therefore significant. In some ways we open new avenues for examination of sperm performance," noted Dr. Chih-kuan Tung, co-author and associate professor in physics at North Carolina A&T State University.As a trained physicist, Tung said he is particularly intrigued in the protective dynamics at play when the flow is heaviest.
Watching sperm swim isn't just a scientific sport. Better understanding the physics of how sperm navigate through the complicated female reproductive tract to fertilize the egg may have implications for infertility treatments and beyond. "In the longer term, our understanding may provide better selection of sperm used for intervention such as in vitro fertilization or other assisted-reproduction technologies," Tung said."This may be needed as [these methods] typically skip some or all of the selection mechanisms present in the female tract and yield less favorable results."
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