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Exposure of human, boar, or bull sperm to a synthetic peptide increases binding to an egg-membrane substrate.

We evaluated the effects of in vitro exposure of sperm to synthetic FertPlus peptide, which represents a 60-amino acid sequence within rat prosaposin, using a microwell sperm-binding assay (SBA), in which an extract of hen's egg served as the binding substrate. Sperm suspensions were incubated with FertPlus peptide (six to eight concentrations; 0 and 20-1,280 pM) at 37 degrees C for 10 minutes, diluted > or = 20 times, and placed onto SBA plates. After 60 minutes at 37 degrees C, unbound sperm were washed away and the DNA of bound sperm was quantified. Percentage of sperm bound was independent of the percentage of motile sperm, but immotile sperm did not bind. For fresh human sperm (25 ejaculates), the percentage of sperm bound was increased by exposure to 640 pM peptide (P < 0.01). For 11 of 25 samples, the percentage of sperm bound for the aliquot exposed to 640 pM peptide was > or = 1.4 times the value for a 0 pM control aliquot. With frozen-thawed human sperm, for six of seven samples, binding was > or = 1.4 times greater after exposure to 640 pM peptide. For boar sperm held for approximately 24 hours at approximately 18 degrees C before use (28 ejaculates), there was a higher percentage of sperm bound for aliquots previously exposed to 1,280 pM peptide than there was for control aliquots (P < 0.01). For 16 of 28 samples, exposure to peptide increased the percentage of sperm bound by > or = 1.4 times. For frozen-thawed bull sperm, percentage of sperm bound was > or = 1.4 times greater for 4 of 10 samples that were briefly exposed to 160 pM peptide. Clearly, human, boar, and bull sperm were beneficially modified by brief in vitro exposure to FertPlus peptide, so that for many samples a greater percentage of sperm was bound in vitro. As presented in an accompanying paper, fertility of bull sperm was increased by brief exposure to FertPlus peptide.