Putting Sperm In The Mood

You can buy all kinds of drinks and contraptions that are guaranteed to put you and your partner “in the mood.” Some foodies swear by aphrodisiacs such as oysters, figs, caviar, champagne and the good old standby, chocolate. With that in mind, ladies beware of men whose first date tactics involve buffets consisting of an array of only these foods. There are even FDA-approved drugs that guarantee to help get men and women lacking in the libido department in the mood. Some swear by Barry White while others head straight towards their secret box of sexual toys to liven things up. Now, a new study has chemically determined what puts those little mighty swimmers, sperm, in the mood.

In this new study that hopes to make progress towards a contraceptive pill for men as well as help in developing new infertility treatments, researchers have been able to identify the important biochemical changes that are responsible for preparing sperm for fertilization, or, in essence, getting sperm in the mood for loving and reproducing. Mark Platt, who headed this study, and his fellow researchers were able to determine that when a sperm first enters the reproductive tract of the female, it cannot immediately fertilize an egg. In fact, the only way a sperm can actually fertilize an egg is if it has gone through “capacitation,” an activation process. For years, scientists have known that in order to undergo this process there needs to be phosphorylation. Essentially, this process is responsible for adding molecules of phosphate to distinct amino acids that are inside proteins. This addition, in turn, causes the activities within the cells to be turned on. While scientists were well aware of these facts, they had not determined, biochemically, all the details attached to the processes.

With the help of lab mice, researchers did a comparison of the phosphorylation process using both sperm that had been capacitated (activated and able to fertilize) and sperm that was noncapacitated (non-activated and unable to fertilize). From these samples, researchers were able to clearly identify 44 different peptides that displayed phosphorylation that had affected 59 identified amino acids. These findings showed that altering these distinct sites was necessary in order for the capacitation process to be successful. Scientists also determined the ratio of phosphorylation between those sperm samples that were noncapacitated and those sperm samples that were capacitated. These findings were able to demonstrate biochemically what actually gets sperm to be in the mood.