title: How spermatozoa come to be confined to surfaces.
abstract: In most detailed studies, sea urchin sperm movement has been analyzed mainly from observations of spermatozoa swimming at the interface between two media: water/air or water/glass. When spermatozoa are placed on a microscope slide, they rapidly appear to swim near those interfaces. The aim of this article is to determine how they become confined to the vicinity of surfaces. High-speed observations of moving spermatozoa reveal blurred portions in the flagellum images that propagate from base to tip, suggesting that flagellar waves contain an out-of-plane component. The model we have developed depicts how this tri-dimensional component tends to keep spermatozoa close to interfaces and, as a consequence, increases the time of contact between the egg surface and spermatozoa.
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire de Biologie du Developpement, UMR 7009 CNRS, Villefranche-sur-Mer Cedex, France. cosson@obs-vlfr.fr
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Cosson
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Huitorel
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Gagnon
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D020378:Confined Spaces; D021621:Imaging, Three-Dimensional; D007150:Immunohistochemistry; D008297:Male; D018613:Microscopy, Confocal; D018715:Microscopy, Video; D012617:Sea Urchins / Q000166:cytology / Q000502:physiology*; D013081:Sperm Motility / Q000502:physiology*; D013082:Sperm Tail / Q000502:physiology* / Q000648:ultrastructure; D013550:Swimming / Q000502:physiology