Fertilization is the culmination of a complex selection of the single fertilizing sperm from among the millions delivered in the mammalian ejaculate. That selection imposes challenging barriers in the female reproductive tract opposed by swimming behavior of sperm that allows a small number to reach the site of fertilization. DHM® is used in this publication to investigate the flagellar waveform and sperm swimming behavior.
DHM® gives new quantitative insights into both the flagella waveform and the swimming behavior of sperm. New areas have been opened for exploration of how sperm generate, store, and reuse the torsional forces that underlie the flagellar waveform.
Michael Muschol, Caroline Wenders and Gunther Wennemuth
Lyncée Tec team provided us with a full system consisting of a DHM, incubation chamber and fluorescence module to easily acquire images of sperm cells without perturbing them.
The 4D tracking capability of the Lyncée Tec microscope allows us to study the 3D trajectories in time of sperm cells at an unprecedented speed of 194 images per second without scanning. In combination with other software tools we were able to use Lyncée Tec tracking software to extract the full 4D trajectories of the sperm cells in the field of view. This novel feature helps us observe the sperm cells specific behavior and correlate it with clinical conditions.
This unique system allowed us to enter a completely novel field of research in male reproduction.
Motility is a fundamental characteristic of life. It is on the base of fundamental biological phenomena such as microbial grazing parasitic infection, inter-microbial communication, and animal reproduction. Motile microorganisms are therefore among the most important life-forms on earth, not only because of their abundance, but also their functions. The understanding of these propulsion mechanisms is essential to understand biological systems and to the design of artificial nanomachines. It has major impact on various fields ranging from life science and material science to environmental science.
DHM® can detect and capture an active reorientation behavior in the bacteria (highlighted in red in the figure), demonstrating the capabilities of DHM® to track bacteria during sharp turns. Size and physiological status of micro-organism are measured quantitatively.
“We have tried multiple other systems to track bacteria, and were very positively surprised by the ease of use and the near-immediate results we could obtain with the Lyncée solution”