PLoS ONE (Jan 2012)

Testing human sperm chemotaxis: how to detect biased motion in population assays.

  • Leah Armon,
  • S Roy Caplan,
  • Michael Eisenbach,
  • Benjamin M Friedrich

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0032909
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 7, no. 3
p. e32909

Abstract

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Biased motion of motile cells in a concentration gradient of a chemoattractant is frequently studied on the population level. This approach has been particularly employed in human sperm chemotactic assays, where the fraction of responsive cells is low and detection of biased motion depends on subtle differences. In these assays, statistical measures such as population odds ratios of swimming directions can be employed to infer chemotactic performance. Here, we report on an improved method to assess statistical significance of experimentally determined odds ratios and discuss the strong impact of data correlations that arise from the directional persistence of sperm swimming.