In article <4s263a$9ii at news.aimnet.com>, xyzzyx at aimnet.com (xyzzyx) wrote:
> Is it possible to distinguish a male sperm from a female sperm,
immunologically?
No - Only male cells will display the (male specific) H-Y antigen, but
this is apparently not expressed in sperm.
There is an easier way however. If you can see a sperm, you can safely
assume it is male, since females don't make sperm - they make eggs :-)
If on the other hand, you mean whether the sperm carries an X chromosome
(thus giving rise to a girl) or a Y (giving rise to a boy) the way it is
currently done is to allow several egges to be fertilised, grow into a 16
or 32 cell embryo and extract a couple of cells for genotyping.
Cheers, Mark
