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Updated: Jul 4, 2026
Measuring Sperm Guidance and Motility within the Caenorhabditis elegans Hermaphrodite Reproductive Tract
Published on: June 6, 2019
Tracking sperm in three-dimensions
G Corkidi1, B Taboada, C D Wood
1Unidad de Microscopía Avanzada, Laboratorio de Imágenes y Visión por Computadora, Instituto de Biotecnología, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), Apdo. Postal 510-3, Cuernavaca, 62250 Morelos, Mexico. corkidi@sgima.ceingebi.unam.mx
Abstract:
Sperm motility, crucial for fertilization, has been mostly studied in two dimensions (2D) by recording their swimming trajectories near a flat surface. However, spermatozoa swim in three-dimensions (3D) to find eggs, with their speed being the main impediment to track them under realistic conditions. Here, we describe a novel method allowing 3D tracking and analysis of the trajectories of multiple free-swimming sperm. The system uses a piezo-electric device displacing a large focal distance objective mounted on a microscope to acquire 70 image stacks per second, each stack composed of 60 images that span a depth of 100 microm. With this method, 3D paths of multiple sperm in the same field could be visualized simultaneously during 1 s. Within the same sample we found that surface-confined sperm swam 25% slower, produced 3-fold fewer circular revolutions per second, and had trajectories of 134% greater radius of curvature than those sperm swimming freely in 3D.
