期刊
SCIENTIFIC REPORTS
卷 6, 期 -, 页码 -出版社
NATURE PORTFOLIO
DOI: 10.1038/srep26669
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资金
- Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada [NSERC I2IPJ469164-14, NSERC RGPIN-2015-06701, STPGP 447325]
- Canadian Institutes of Health Research [CIHR 139088]
- University of Toronto Connaught Fund Global Challenge Award
- Ontario Graduate Scholarship (OGS)
- Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC)
Sperm migration through the female tract is crucial to fertilization, but the role of the complex and confined structure of the fallopian tube in sperm guidance remains unknown. Here, by confocal imaging microchannels head-on, we distinguish corner- vs. wall- vs. bulk-swimming bull sperm in confined geometries. Corner-swimming dominates with local areal concentrations as high as 200-fold that of the bulk. The relative degree of corner-swimming is strongest in small channels, decreases with increasing channel size, and plateaus for channels above 200 mu m. Corner-swimming remains predominant across the physiologically-relevant range of viscosity and pH. Together, boundary-following sperm account for over 95% of the sperm distribution in small rectangular channels, which is similar to the percentage of wall swimmers in circular channels of similar size. We also demonstrate that wall-swimming sperm travel closer to walls in smaller channels (similar to 100 mu m), where the opposite wall is within the hydrodynamic interaction length-scale. The corner accumulation effect is more than the superposition of the influence of two walls, and over 5-fold stronger than that of a single wall. These findings suggest that folds and corners are dominant in sperm migration in the narrow (sub-mm) lumen of the fallopian tube and microchannel-based sperm selection devices.
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