Advanced Sperm Processing/Selection Techniques

Abstract

DNA damage is considered to be one of the main factors linked with male infertility and successful human reproduction partly relies on the integrity of sperm DNA. Assisted reproductive technique (ART) is a treatment of choice for the male and female infertility and mainly relies on the sperm processing and selection techniques to select superior-quality spermatozoa. Even after development of different techniques for selection of spermatozoa, the success rates remain below expectation. Sperm with higher DNA fragmentation are associated with poor fertilization and cleavage rates leading to development of poor-quality embryo and early pregnancy loss. Conventional selection techniques cannot select spermatozoa based on their DNA integrity and chromatin structure. Certain novel advanced techniques such as electrophoresis, zeta potential, molecular binding techniques, morphological evaluation of sperm under high magnification, and microfluidics are able to select sperm with intact DNA. Therefore, this chapter deals with the advanced techniques developed for sperm processing and their use in ART. Additionally we have discussed sperm selection techniques such as confocal light absorption and scattering spectroscopic microscopy, interferometric phase microscopy, Raman spectrometry, and synthetic oligopeptide (DWI) staining, which might be useful in the future.