Reproduction Abstracts

Objective: Considering the recent interest in the use of hyaluronan binding as a sperm selection marker for ICSI, it is becoming increasingly important to revisit and characterise the sperm hyaluronic acid binding proteins (HABPs) that are an integral part of the selection process. To this end, the HABPs in non-capacitated, capacitated and acrosome reacted spermatozoa were investigated.Design: A laboratory based investigation using immune-cytochemical an...

Introduction: During spermiogenesis, which is the last stage in spermatozoa maturation, a spermatozoa plasma membrane remodelling stage occurs which promotes the up-regulation of membrane receptors to aid the zona pellucida binding e.g. hyaluronic acid (HA) receptors.Researches have demonstrated that spermatozoa that are able to bind to HA in vitro are, in fact, more mature spermatozoa that have completed specific maturation processes and are ul...

Despite being transcriptionally silent,1 mature spermatozoa contain small amounts of RNA comprising various classes and although, de novo translation of spermatozoal RNA has been demonstrated,2 the role of these RNAs is currently unclear. However, looking across species boundaries and comparing the RNA profiles of sperm from a number of mammals may give insights into their function in the process of reproduction, including potentially post-fertil...

Introduction: Genome-wide analysis of DNA methylation in mammalian preimplantation embryos, particularly at the single embryo level, will be of particular use for assessing the epigenetic status and health of in vitro-derived embryos, including humans. To date, single embryo DNA methylation analysis has been limited to a small number of genes (<5). In this study we used an adaptation of reduced representation bisulfite sequencing (RRBS) to i) perform genome-wide a...