Abstract
Infertility is a widespread and often unexplained issue. Studying reproduction using C. elegans males offers insight into the influence of individual factors on male fertility in humans. We have created a collection of protocols to assess several aspects of C. elegans sperm quality, including number, size, rate of activation, and mitochondrial morphology. Studying sperm biology in a model system such as C. elegans allows access to the wealth of resources and techniques that have been optimized for that organism while providing valuable biological information that may be applicable to other systems. Graphic abstract: Flowchart depicting the preparation of C. elegans males and subsequent sperm quality assays
Highlights
[Background] Approximately 8% of couples worldwide suffer from infertility (World Health Organization, 1987), and 30% of those cases have unknown causes (Practice Committee of the American Society for Reproductive, 2006)
Model systems can be useful in investigating the influence of single factors on various aspects of fertility
Recent work from our lab has demonstrated that mafr-1, a regulator of RNA polymerase III (Hammerquist and Curran, 2020), and alh-6 and prdh-1, enzymes in the mitochondrial proline catabolism pathway (Yen et al, 2020; Yen and Curran, 2021), are required for proper sperm function in C. elegans, and these roles may be conserved in mammalian models (Bonhoure et al, 2015; Yen and Curran, 2021)
Summary
[Background] Approximately 8% of couples worldwide suffer from infertility (World Health Organization, 1987), and 30% of those cases have unknown causes (Practice Committee of the American Society for Reproductive, 2006). Microscope slide cover slips (VWR, catalog number: 48366-227) 6. Males should be prepared in this way for all assays, except for qualitative mitochondrial morphology, for which the MitoTracker dye should be applied to food prior to transferring males to the plates (see Procedure F).
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