ArticleCommunications biology2023
Human sperm cooperate to transit highly viscous regions on the competitive pathway to fertilization.
Article in Communications biology, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
What it found
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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
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed.
- Spaceborne and spaceborn: Physiological aspects of pregnancy and birth during interplanetary flight.Experimental physiology · 2026Review
- Current Advances in Cetacean Semen Cryopreservation and Their Application to Yangtze Finless Porpoise Conservation.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2026Review
- Single-cell metabolic profiling of stallion spermatozoa by flow cytometry using NADH and FAD autofluorescence†.Biology of reproduction · 2026Article
- The Known and Unknown About Female Reproductive Tract Mucus Rheological Properties.BioEssays : news and reviews in molecular, cellular and developmental biology · 2025Review
- Evolutionary Aspects of Sperm Physiology and Its Assessment.Methods in molecular biology (Clifton, N.J.) · 2025Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Human sperm compete for fertilization. Here, we find that human sperm, unexpectedly, cooperate under conditions mimicking the viscosity contrasts in the female reproductive tract. Sperm attach at the head region to migrate as a cooperative group upon transit into and through a high viscosity medium (15-100 cP) from low viscosity seminal fluid. Sperm groups benefit from higher swimming velocity, exceeding that of individual sperm by over 50%. We find that sperm associated with a group possess high DNA integrity (7% fragmentation index) - a stark contrast to individual sperm exhibiting low DNA integrity (> 50% fragmentation index) - and feature membrane decapacitation factors that mediate sperm attachment to form the group. Cooperative behaviour becomes less prevalent upon capacitation and groups tend to disband as the surrounding viscosity reduces. When sperm from different male sources are present, related sperm preferentially form groups and achieve greater swimming velocity, while unrelated sperm are slowed by their involvement in a group. These findings reveal cooperation as a selective mode of human sperm motion - sperm with high DNA integrity cooperate to transit the highly viscous regions in the female tract and outcompete rival sperm for fertilization - and provide insight into cooperation-based sperm selection strategies for assisted reproduction.
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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.