Intermittent swimming in live sea urchin sperm

Sperm of the sea urchin Tripneustes gratilla repeatedly start and stop swimming when suspended in seawater and observed by dark-field microscopy. While in the quiescent state, which usually lasts about a second, the sperm assume s shape resembling a cane, with a sharp bend of approximately 3.4 rad in the proximal region of the flagellum and very little curvature in the rest of the flagellum except for a slight curve near the tip. The occurrence of quiescence requires the presence of at least 2 mM Ca2+ in the seawater, and the percentage of sperm quiescent at any one time increases substantially when the sperm are illuminated with blue light. With intense illumination, close to 100% of the sperm become quiescent, and this percentage decreases gradually to approximately 0.3% over a 10(4)-fold decrease in light intensity. An increased concentration of K+ in the seawater also increases the percentage of quiescence, with a majority of the sperm being quiescent in seawater containing 80 mM KCl. The induction of quiescence by light or by increased KCl is completely inhibited by 10 micrometers chlorpromazine, and approximately 90% inhibited by 1 mM procaine or sodium barbital. Sperm treated with the divalent-cation ionophore A23187 swim quite normally, although for a relatively short period, in artificial seawater lacking divalent cations, but are abruptly arrested upon addition of 0.04--0.2 mM free Ca2%. The flagellar waveform of these arrested sperm is almost identical to that of light-induced quiescence in the live sperm. The results support the hypothesis that quiescence is induced by a rise in intracellular Ca2%, perhaps as a consequence of a membrane depolarization, and that it is similar to the arrest response in cilia.