Proteomic Analysis of Sperm Function and Fertility
Summary
Proteomic analysis in the context of sperm function and fertility involves the comprehensive characterisation of the protein complement of spermatozoa and seminal plasma. By leveraging high-resolution mass spectrometry and advanced bioinformatics, researchers can identify and quantify thousands of proteins, revealing molecular pathways that underpin sperm motility, capacitation, acrosome reaction and embryo development. Global profiling has elucidated proteins involved in energy metabolism, flagellar structure, lipid handling and stress responses. Comparative studies between fertile and subfertile subjects have uncovered differentially abundant proteins that correlate with sperm count, motility and morphology, offering candidate biomarkers for diagnosis and targets for therapeutic intervention. Furthermore, exploration of species-specific proteomes has provided insights into evolutionary conservation and divergence of fertility mechanisms across mammals. This proteomic landscape has broad implications for clinical assisted reproduction, livestock breeding and conservation biology, and is informing novel strategies to diagnose idiopathic infertility and to enhance reproductive outcomes through biomarker-guided selection and treatment.
Research from Nature Portfolio
Recent studies have applied quantitative proteomics to bovine seminal plasma in order to uncover markers of fertility in dairy bulls. One investigation identified over a thousand proteins and distinguished those enriched in high-fertility versus low-fertility animals, linking specific extracellular proteins with sperm viability and embryo viability scores. Multivariate analyses highlighted interactions between binding proteins and protease inhibitors as potential predictors of cryotolerance in frozen-thawed semen. Combined, these works establish a robust catalogue of seminal plasma components that correlate with fertilising capacity and resilience to cryopreservation, providing practical assays to support animal breeding programmes.
Proteomic Analysis of Sperm Function and Fertility publication trend
The graph below shows the total number of articles in proteomic analysis of sperm function and fertility across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).
Technical terms
Proteome: the full complement of proteins expressed in a cell, tissue or organism at a given time.
Mass spectrometry: an analytical technique for identifying and quantifying proteins by measuring mass-to-charge ratios of peptide fragments.
Capacitation: a physiological process that sperm undergo in the female tract to gain fertilising competence, involving protein phosphorylation and membrane remodelling.
Seminal plasma: the fluid component of semen that surrounds spermatozoa and contains proteins, lipids and signalling molecules.
Spermatozoa: mature male gametes specialised for motility and fertilisation of the oocyte.
References
- Proteomic Landscape of Human Sperm in Patients with Different Spermatogenic Impairments. Cells (2023).
- The Role of Tubulin Polymerization-Promoting Protein2 (TPPP2) in Spermatogenesis: A Narrative Review. International Journal of Molecular Sciences (2024).
- New Insights on Sperm Function in Male Infertility of Unknown Origin: A Multimodal Approach. Biomolecules (2023).
- Proteomic landscape of seminal plasma associated with dairy bull fertility. Scientific Reports (2018).
- Protein signatures of seminal plasma from bulls with contrasting frozen-thawed sperm viability. Scientific Reports (2020).
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