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A trade-off between thickness and length in the zebra finch sperm mid-piece
The sperm mid-piece has traditionally been considered to be the engine that powers sperm. Larger mid-pieces have therefore been assumed to provide greater energetic capacity. However, in the zebra finch Taeniopygia guttata, a recent study showed a surprising negative relationship between mid-piece l...
Autores principales: | , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
The Royal Society
2018
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6083248/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30051869 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2018.0865 |
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author | Mendonca, Tania Birkhead, Tim R. Cadby, Ashley J. Forstmeier, Wolfgang Hemmings, Nicola |
author_facet | Mendonca, Tania Birkhead, Tim R. Cadby, Ashley J. Forstmeier, Wolfgang Hemmings, Nicola |
author_sort | Mendonca, Tania |
collection | PubMed |
description | The sperm mid-piece has traditionally been considered to be the engine that powers sperm. Larger mid-pieces have therefore been assumed to provide greater energetic capacity. However, in the zebra finch Taeniopygia guttata, a recent study showed a surprising negative relationship between mid-piece length and sperm energy content. Using a multi-dimensional approach to study mid-piece structure, we tested whether this unexpected relationship can be explained by a trade-off between mid-piece length and mid-piece thickness and/or cristae density inside the mitochondrial helix. We used selective plane illumination microscopy to study mid-piece structure from three-dimensional images of zebra finch sperm and used high-resolution transmission electron microscopy to quantify mitochondrial density. Contrary to the assumption that longer mid-pieces are larger and therefore produce or contain a greater amount of energy, our results indicate that the amount of mitochondrial material is consistent across mid-pieces of varying lengths, and longer mid-pieces are simply proportionately ‘thinner’. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-6083248 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2018 |
publisher | The Royal Society |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-60832482018-08-10 A trade-off between thickness and length in the zebra finch sperm mid-piece Mendonca, Tania Birkhead, Tim R. Cadby, Ashley J. Forstmeier, Wolfgang Hemmings, Nicola Proc Biol Sci Behaviour The sperm mid-piece has traditionally been considered to be the engine that powers sperm. Larger mid-pieces have therefore been assumed to provide greater energetic capacity. However, in the zebra finch Taeniopygia guttata, a recent study showed a surprising negative relationship between mid-piece length and sperm energy content. Using a multi-dimensional approach to study mid-piece structure, we tested whether this unexpected relationship can be explained by a trade-off between mid-piece length and mid-piece thickness and/or cristae density inside the mitochondrial helix. We used selective plane illumination microscopy to study mid-piece structure from three-dimensional images of zebra finch sperm and used high-resolution transmission electron microscopy to quantify mitochondrial density. Contrary to the assumption that longer mid-pieces are larger and therefore produce or contain a greater amount of energy, our results indicate that the amount of mitochondrial material is consistent across mid-pieces of varying lengths, and longer mid-pieces are simply proportionately ‘thinner’. The Royal Society 2018-07-25 2018-07-25 /pmc/articles/PMC6083248/ /pubmed/30051869 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2018.0865 Text en © 2018 The Authors. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited. |
spellingShingle | Behaviour Mendonca, Tania Birkhead, Tim R. Cadby, Ashley J. Forstmeier, Wolfgang Hemmings, Nicola A trade-off between thickness and length in the zebra finch sperm mid-piece |
title | A trade-off between thickness and length in the zebra finch sperm mid-piece |
title_full | A trade-off between thickness and length in the zebra finch sperm mid-piece |
title_fullStr | A trade-off between thickness and length in the zebra finch sperm mid-piece |
title_full_unstemmed | A trade-off between thickness and length in the zebra finch sperm mid-piece |
title_short | A trade-off between thickness and length in the zebra finch sperm mid-piece |
title_sort | trade-off between thickness and length in the zebra finch sperm mid-piece |
topic | Behaviour |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6083248/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30051869 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2018.0865 |
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