Sperm DNA and detection of DNA fragmentations in sperm

Özet

The questionable effectiveness of routine sperm parameters in determining male factor infertility problemsand increasing the success rates of assisted reproductive techniques have led to the investigation of moredetailed sperm parameters that could affect the male fertility and reproduction. Thus, the effects of differentsperm parameters such as sperm DNA integrity was started to be investigated thanks to the previouslydescribed methods such as single cell gel electrophoresis (COMET) assay, sperm chromatin structure assay(SCSA), acridine orange test (AOT), terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase-mediated deoxyuridine (TdT)triphosphate (dUTP) nick end labeling (TUNEL) assay and sperm chromatin dispersion (SCD) test. However,studying on sperm DNA might be very complex because the sperm DNA differs from the somatic cellDNA with its unique structure. Also, the sperm DNA undergoes many changes during spermatogenesisand it is condensed by being packaged tightly with different types and numbers of protamines in differentspecies. Despite all these difficulties, these methods provide important information about the reasons andconsequences of DNA damages in sperm and the effects of these damages on reproduction.