Department of Animal Reproduction, National Institute for Agricultural and Food Research and Technology, Madrid 28040, Spain.
Asian J Androl. 2012 Mar;14(2):335-7. doi: 10.1038/aja.2011.119. Epub 2011 Oct 17.
It is well known that transit through the epididymis involves an increase in the compaction of sperm chromatin, which acquires fully condensed status at the caput epididymidis. The purpose of this study was to compare the terminal deoxyribonucleotidyl transferase-mediated dUTP nick end-labelling (TUNEL) assay, the comet assay, the sperm chromatin structure assay (SCSA) and the sperm chromatin dispersion (SCD) test by analysing spermatozoa from the caput and cauda epididymidis in order to demonstrate the ability of each technique to discriminate between different degrees of sperm maturity related to chromatin compaction and DNA fragmentation. Our results suggest that some populations of DNA-fragmented spermatozoa associated with immature sperm can only be identified using the comet assay and the SCSA but not with the SCD test or the TUNEL assay.
众所周知,精子通过附睾时,其染色质会发生浓缩,在附睾头部达到完全浓缩状态。本研究旨在通过比较末端脱氧核苷酸转移酶介导的 dUTP 缺口末端标记(TUNEL)检测、彗星试验、精子染色质结构分析(SCSA)和精子染色质扩散(SCD)试验,分析附睾头和附睾尾精子,以证明每种技术区分与染色质浓缩和 DNA 碎片化相关的不同成熟程度精子的能力。我们的结果表明,一些与不成熟精子相关的 DNA 碎片化精子群体只能通过彗星试验和 SCSA 检测识别,而不能通过 SCD 试验或 TUNEL 检测识别。