Figure 7
Diagram of the differences between decapitated and decaudated spermatozoa (DDS) and Odf2-DDS. (Top) DDS; head-neck separation. DDS is untreatable due to sperm death. The degenerated tail could contain the neck components, with the overlying plasma membrane damaged (Fig. 1). (Bottom) Odf2-DDS; neck-midpiece separation. Odf2-DDS is treatable by intracytoplasmic headneck injection or ICSI, since the headneck contains a healthy paternal genome with the overlying intact plasma membrane. The separated headneck lacks the complex of outer dense fibres and microtubules because they have slipped out from the neck; the complex is found as a rod-shaped structure(s) at the top of the separated tail, near a barrel-shaped structure.
