What is it about?
During their passage in the male and female reproductive tract, sperm acquire fertility-modulating proteins from the surrounding environment in an incremental fashion. This acquisition is mediated by extracellular vesicles (EVs) secreted in the reproductive fluids. Recently, EVs which are of both exosomal and microvesicular nature were identified in the oviductal fluid and were dubbed as "oviductosomes". Oviductosomes were shown to deliver their cargo to sperm via a fusogenic mechanism, as revealed by 3-dimensional Super Resolution- Structured Illumination Microscopy (3D SR-SIM). EVs were labeled with a lipophilic dye (red) and shown to co-localize with with Plasma membrane Ca2+ -ATPase 4 (PMCA4) protein (green) on the murine sperm head where the colors merged (yellow).
Featured Image
Why is it important?
3D-SR-SIM provides a superior method of visualizing sperm-EV interaction and he delivery of proteins to sperm.
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: The contribution of exosomes/microvesicles to the sperm proteome, Molecular Reproduction and Development, February 2015, Wiley,
DOI: 10.1002/mrd.22452.
You can read the full text:
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
