Characterization of intracellular calcium increase in response to progesterone in mouse sperm

ROMAROWSKI A.; SANCHEZ-CARDENAS C.; DARSZON A.; BUFFONE MG.

Congreso; XVI Jornadas Anuales de la Sociedad Argentina de Biología.; 2014

Sperm acrosome reaction (AR) is an essential step in the mammalian fertilization process. AR requires an increase of intracellular calcium ([Ca2+]i). Progesterone (P4) produced by cumulus cells has been recently proposed as AR inductor in several species including human sperm. Few studies reported that P4 promotes an [Ca2+]i increase, however some of their results are contradictory. Our goal is to study the [Ca2+]i increase promoted by P4 using single sperm imaging in fluo-3AM loaded mice sperm. P4 stimulation either with 40 or 100µM promotes a [Ca2+]i increase in a statistically significant percentage of sperm (p