Rolling controls sperm navigation in response to the dynamic rheological properties of the environment
Abstract
Mammalian sperm rolling around their longitudinal axes is a long-observed component of motility, but its function in the fertilization process, and more specifically in sperm migration within the female reproductive tract, remains elusive. While investigating bovine sperm motion under simple shear flow and in a quiescent microfluidic reservoir and developing theoretical and computational models, we found that rolling regulates sperm navigation in response to the rheological properties of the sperm environment. In other words, rolling enables a sperm to swim progressively even if the flagellum beats asymmetrically. Therefore, a rolling sperm swims stably along the nearby walls (wall-dependent navigation) and efficiently upstream under an external fluid flow (rheotaxis). By contrast, an increase in ambient viscosity and viscoelasticity suppresses rolling, consequently, non-rolling sperm are less susceptible to nearby walls and external fluid flow and swim in two-dimensional diffusive circular paths (surface exploration). This surface exploration mode of swimming is caused by the intrinsic asymmetry in flagellar beating such that the curvature of a sperm’s circular path is proportional to the level of asymmetry. We found that the suppression of rolling is reversible and occurs in sperm with lower asymmetry in their beating pattern at higher ambient viscosity and viscoelasticity. Consequently, the rolling component of motility may function as a regulatory tool allowing sperm to navigate according to the rheological properties of the functional region within the female reproductive tract.
Data availability
All data needed to evaluate the conclusions in the paper are present in the paper and/or the Supplementary Materials. All data related to this paper are deposited in https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.ngf1vhhtd
-
Data from: Rolling controls sperm navigation in response to the dynamic rheological properties of the environmentDryad Digital Repository, doi:10.5061/dryad.ngf1vhhtd.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
Cornell University
- Alireza Abbaspourrad
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Reviewing Editor
- Raymond E Goldstein, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom
Version history
- Received: March 23, 2021
- Accepted: August 3, 2021
- Accepted Manuscript published: August 4, 2021 (version 1)
- Version of Record published: August 25, 2021 (version 2)
Copyright
© 2021, Zaferani et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
Metrics
-
- 1,678
- Page views
-
- 249
- Downloads
-
- 13
- Citations
Article citation count generated by polling the highest count across the following sources: Crossref, PubMed Central, Scopus.
Download links
Downloads (link to download the article as PDF)
Open citations (links to open the citations from this article in various online reference manager services)
Cite this article (links to download the citations from this article in formats compatible with various reference manager tools)
Further reading
-
- Chromosomes and Gene Expression
- Developmental Biology
Imaging experiments reveal the complex and dynamic nature of the transcriptional hubs associated with Notch signaling.
-
- Cell Biology
- Developmental Biology
Cylicins are testis-specific proteins, which are exclusively expressed during spermiogenesis. In mice and humans, two Cylicins, the gonosomal X-linked Cylicin 1 (Cylc1/CYLC1) and the autosomal Cylicin 2 (Cylc2/CYLC2) genes, have been identified. Cylicins are cytoskeletal proteins with an overall positive charge due to lysine-rich repeats. While Cylicins have been localized in the acrosomal region of round spermatids, they resemble a major component of the calyx within the perinuclear theca at the posterior part of mature sperm nuclei. However, the role of Cylicins during spermiogenesis has not yet been investigated. Here, we applied CRISPR/Cas9-mediated gene editing in zygotes to establish Cylc1- and Cylc2-deficient mouse lines as a model to study the function of these proteins. Cylc1 deficiency resulted in male subfertility, whereas Cylc2-/-, Cylc1-/yCylc2+/-, and Cylc1-/yCylc2-/- males were infertile. Phenotypical characterization revealed that loss of Cylicins prevents proper calyx assembly during spermiogenesis. This results in decreased epididymal sperm counts, impaired shedding of excess cytoplasm, and severe structural malformations, ultimately resulting in impaired sperm motility. Furthermore, exome sequencing identified an infertile man with a hemizygous variant in CYLC1 and a heterozygous variant in CYLC2, displaying morphological abnormalities of the sperm including the absence of the acrosome. Thus, our study highlights the relevance and importance of Cylicins for spermiogenic remodeling and male fertility in human and mouse, and provides the basis for further studies on unraveling the complex molecular interactions between perinuclear theca proteins required during spermiogenesis.