ArticleeLife2021
Rolling controls sperm navigation in response to the dynamic rheological properties of the environment.
Article in eLife, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 15 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
15 citing papers in PubMed.
- Sperm hyperactivation drives a circling-and-wandering swimming behavior.Nature communications · 2026Article
- The Known and Unknown About Female Reproductive Tract Mucus Rheological Properties.BioEssays : news and reviews in molecular, cellular and developmental biology · 2025Review
- Swimming by Spinning: Spinning-Top Type Rotations Regularize Sperm Swimming Into Persistently Progressive Paths in 3D.Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) · 2025Article
- Fallopian tube rheology regulates epithelial cell differentiation and function to enhance cilia formation and coordination.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Fluid flow reconstruction around a free-swimming sperm in 3D.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- Time and power dependence of laser-induced photodamage on human sperm revealed by longitudinal rolling measurement using optical tweezers.Biomedical optics express · 2024Article
- Exploring altered bovine sperm trajectories by sperm tracking in unconfined conditions.Frontiers in veterinary science · 2024Article
- Human sperm rotate with a conserved direction during free swimming in four dimensions.Journal of cell science · 2023Article
- Bull Semen Obtained on Beef Farms by Electroejaculation: Sperm Quality in the First Two Hours of Storing with Different Extenders and Holding Temperatures.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2023Article
- Lab-on-chip (LoC) application for quality sperm selection: An undelivered promise?Open research Europe · 2023Review
- Article
- cAMP and the Fibrous Sheath Protein CABYR (CaInternational journal of molecular sciences · 2022Article
- Chirality and frequency measurement of longitudinal rolling of human sperm using optical trap.Frontiers in bioengineering and biotechnology · 2022Article
- Mammalian sperm hyperactivation regulates navigation via physical boundaries and promotes pseudo-chemotaxis.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2021Article
- Rolling controls sperm navigation in response to the dynamic rheological properties of the environment.eLife · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Mammalian sperm rolling around their longitudinal axes is a long-observed component of motility, but its function in the fertilization process, and more specifically in sperm migration within the female reproductive tract, remains elusive. While investigating bovine sperm motion under simple shear flow and in a quiescent microfluidic reservoir and developing theoretical and computational models, we found that rolling regulates sperm navigation in response to the rheological properties of the sperm environment. In other words, rolling enables a sperm to swim progressively even if the flagellum beats asymmetrically. Therefore, a rolling sperm swims stably along the nearby walls (wall-dependent navigation) and efficiently upstream under an external fluid flow (rheotaxis). By contrast, an increase in ambient viscosity and viscoelasticity suppresses rolling, consequently, non-rolling sperm are less susceptible to nearby walls and external fluid flow and swim in two-dimensional diffusive circular paths (surface exploration). This surface exploration mode of swimming is caused by the intrinsic asymmetry in flagellar beating such that the curvature of a sperm's circular path is proportional to the level of asymmetry. We found that the suppression of rolling is reversible and occurs in sperm with lower asymmetry in their beating pattern at higher ambient viscosity and viscoelasticity. Consequently, the rolling component of motility may function as a regulatory tool allowing sperm to navigate according to the rheological properties of the functional region within the female reproductive tract.
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.