title: Testing human sperm chemotaxis: how to detect biased motion in population assays.
abstract: Biased motion of motile cells in a concentration gradient of a chemoattractant is frequently studied on the population level. This approach has been particularly employed in human sperm chemotactic assays, where the fraction of responsive cells is low and detection of biased motion depends on subtle differences. In these assays, statistical measures such as population odds ratios of swimming directions can be employed to infer chemotactic performance. Here, we report on an improved method to assess statistical significance of experimentally determined odds ratios and discuss the strong impact of data correlations that arise from the directional persistence of sperm swimming.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biological Chemistry, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel.
authors.forename: Leah
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Armon
authors.forename: S Roy
authors.initials: SR
authors.lastname: Caplan
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Eisenbach
authors.forename: Benjamin M
authors.initials: BM
authors.lastname: Friedrich
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D002633:Chemotaxis; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008954:Models, Biological; D013081:Sperm Motility