File:Mouse- spermatozoa EM and diagram.jpg

Mouse Spermatozoa EM and Diagram

The Spermatozoon: the spermatozoon is made up of two main regions, the head and the tail. The anterior portion of the head is covered by the acrosomal cap and the head is joined to the tail by the connecting piece. The tail is divided into three regions: the midpiece; principal piece; and the end-piece.

The electron micrographs showing cross-sections (not to scale) of each region highlights the main components of the tail structure: the axoneme; outer dense fibers (ODF); and the mitochondrial sheath (midpiece) and fibrous sheath (FS) (principal piece). The end-piece consists solely of the axoneme and plasma membrane.

Links: Spermatozoa Development | Mouse Development

Reference

<pubmed>19758979</pubmed>| PMC2816191 | Hum Reprod Update.

Hum Reprod Update. 2010 Mar–Apr; 16(2): 205–224. Published online 2009 September 15. doi: 10.1093/humupd/dmp032.

Copyright

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.5/uk/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Original File Name: Figure 1 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2816191/figure/DMP032F1/ (extracted from full figure)