Human sperm steer with second harmonics of the flagellar beat

The mechanism allowing sperm to steer is not fully understood. The authors find that superposition of two harmonic waves breaks the flagellar beat symmetry temporally rather than spatially, and that this mechanism is enhanced by the sexual hormone progesterone, which changes the motility pattern.

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Guglielmo Saggiorato, Luis Alvarez, Jan F. Jikeli, U. Benjamin Kaupp, Gerhard Gompper, Jens Elgeti
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Nature Publishing Group 2017-11-01
Series:Nature Communications
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-017-01462-y