ArticleeLife2014
Rheotaxis facilitates upstream navigation of mammalian sperm cells.
Article in eLife, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 108 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
108 citing papers in PubMed.
- A sperm racetrack to separate sperm by swim speed.Lab on a chip · 2026Article
- The systems that transport ions and their impact on sperm function and male fertility.Function (Oxford, England) · 2026Review
- Simulated microgravity alters sperm navigation, fertilization and embryo development in mammals.Communications biology · 2026Article
- Sperm hyperactivation drives a circling-and-wandering swimming behavior.Nature communications · 2026Article
- From reservoir to rendezvous: the journey of sperm through the oviduct.Reproduction, fertility, and development · 2026Review
- Towards cervical AI of sheep with stored semen: latest insights and future developments.The Journal of reproduction and development · 2026Review
- Physics of microbial taxis and behaviours in response to various physical stimuli.Philosophical transactions. Series A, Mathematical, physical, and engineering sciences · 2025Review
- Straining Flow Effects on Sperm Flagellar Energetics in Microfluidic Cross-Slot Traps.Small (Weinheim an der Bergstrasse, Germany) · 2025Article
- Swimming by Spinning: Spinning-Top Type Rotations Regularize Sperm Swimming Into Persistently Progressive Paths in 3D.Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) · 2025Article
- Enhancement of bacterial rheotaxis in non-Newtonian fluids.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Tunable motile sperm separation based on sperm persistence in migrating through shear barriers.Biomicrofluidics · 2024Article
- Review
- Article
- Microfluidics-A novel technique for high-quality sperm selection for greater ART outcomes.FASEB bioAdvances · 2024Review
- An Observation of the Microstructure of Cervical Mucus in Cows during the Proestrus, Estrus, and Metestrus Stages and the Impact on Sperm Penetration Ability.Veterinary sciences · 2024Article
- Impact of various cryo-preservation steps on sperm rheotaxis and sperm kinematics in bull.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Sperm in the Mammalian Female Reproductive Tract: Surfing Through the Tract to Try to Beat the Odds.Annual review of animal biosciences · 2024Review
- AI-aided geometric design of anti-infection catheters.Science advances · 2024Article
- Sperm selection by the oviduct: perspectives for male fertility and assisted reproductive technologies†.Biology of reproduction · 2023Article
- Dynamics of gametes and embryos in the oviduct: what can in vivo imaging reveal?Reproduction (Cambridge, England) · 2023Review
48 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
A major puzzle in biology is how mammalian sperm maintain the correct swimming direction during various phases of the sexual reproduction process. Whilst chemotaxis may dominate near the ovum, it is unclear which cues guide spermatozoa on their long journey towards the egg. Hypothesized mechanisms range from peristaltic pumping to temperature sensing and response to fluid flow variations (rheotaxis), but little is known quantitatively about them. We report the first quantitative study of mammalian sperm rheotaxis, using microfluidic devices to investigate systematically swimming of human and bull sperm over a range of physiologically relevant shear rates and viscosities. Our measurements show that the interplay of fluid shear, steric surface-interactions, and chirality of the flagellar beat leads to stable upstream spiralling motion of sperm cells, thus providing a generic and robust rectification mechanism to support mammalian fertilisation. A minimal mathematical model is presented that accounts quantitatively for the experimental observations.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.02403.001.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.