Tuesday 25 September 2012

How do your sperm swim?

Male fertility problems are sometimes caused by sperm not moving properly - but although scientists can see if sperm aren't moving or are swimming backwards, their normal patterns of movement are not usually closely monitored.  Now, scientists in the States have tracked sperm using 3D techniques to see exactly how they move.  They followed 1, 500 sperm, monitoring how they swam to try to understand more about their motility and found that rather than swimming in completely straight lines, most follow slightly curved routes, and a small percentage will swim in circular whirls...

You can read more about the research on the website of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 

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