IUBio

are male and female sperm immunologically distinguishable?

Tom Parish/Cambridge/Biogen Tom_Parish/Cambridge/Biogen.BIOGEN at BIOGEN.COM
Fri Jul 12 15:40:45 EST 1996


In article <M_Doherty-1107960941210001 at db428.niaid.nih.gov>,
M_Doherty at NIH.gov (M. Doherty) wrote:

> 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.
> 

I have heard that Yale University has a centrifugation process for separating 
the sperm for parents who want to predetermine the sex of their child.  The 
sperm are then delivered by artifical insemination.  I have no idea what their 
success rate is for this process.

Tom Parish
Tom_Parish at Biogen.com



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