Sperm motility in modulated microchannels

Sperm motility in modulated microchannels

Blog Article

Sperm cells swim through the fluid by a periodic wave-like beating of their flagellum.At low Reynolds numbers Hayward AquaVac 6 and in confinement, the directed motion of sperm and other microswimmers is strongly influenced by steric and hydrodynamic wall interactions.We model sperm motility in mesoscale hydrodynamics simulations by imposing a planar traveling bending wave along the flagellum.Sperm are simulated swimming in curved, straight, shallow and zigzag-shaped microchannels.Changes in the sidewall modulations and the imposed beat pattern allow the identification of a strong dependence of the surface attraction on the beat-shape envelope of the sperm cell.

For swimming in zigzag microchannels, the deflection-angle distribution at sharp corners is calculated and found to be in good agreement with Led Wooden Base recent microfluidic experiments.The simulations reveal a strong dependence of the deflection angle on the orientation of the beat plane with respect to the channel sidewall, and thus deepen the understanding of sperm navigation under strong confinement.Detachment of sperm, while swimming along curved walls, is dominated by the change of beat-plane orientation.Therefore, either the emergence of a nonplanar component of the flagellar beat with increasing wavelength or the strong confinement in shallow channels drastically increases wall attraction.Our simulation results reveal a consistent picture of passive sperm guidance that is dominated by the steric interactions of the beat pattern with the nearby surfaces.