In mammalian reproduction, sperm have a tough task: like trout swimming upstream, they must swim against a current through a convoluted female reproductive tract in search of the unfertilized egg.
Many fertility studies focus on how fast sperm swim, but a new study shifts that focus to the physical environment of the female body. The collaborative work was led by Mingming Wu, associate professor of biological and environmental engineering, and Susan Suarez, professor of biomedical sciences in the College of Veterinary Medicine.
Their study asserts that, in the presence of a gentle fluid flow, the biophysics of the female reproductive tract – in particular, the grooves that line parts of it – critically guide sperm migration without aiding the migration of pathogens. The study was published online April 13 by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, with first author Chih-kuan Tung, a postdoctoral associate in Wu’s lab and a physicist.
The study also showed that sexually transmitted pathogens that infect humans and cattle with trichomoniasis are swept safely away under the same fluidic conditions. The findings point to the co-evolution of sperm motility and the female reproductive tract, and could lend new insight into fertility treatments by shifting focus to the physics of the interaction of sperm with the female reproductive tract.
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