AP+Sperm+Article

Sperm Article (1) What is a germ cell? (male germ cell and female germ cell) A germ is a sex cell. For males it is the sperm and for females it is the eggs.

(2) Compare the size of a sperm to an egg. Insert a picture here comparing the sizes. The sperm is micro and the smallest cells in the body. It has a tail, head and middle and the egg can be seen with the human eye. (3) Compare the number of eggs produced by human females to the number sperm produced by human males. Female only have two eggs. Sperm spreads about 5 microns, or two ten-thousandths of an inch, less than half the width of a white blood cell or a skin cell.

(4) Describe semen. What is the purpose of semen? Semen is a mix of sugars, citric acid and other ingredients designed to pamper and power the sperm cells and prepare them for difficult times ahead.

(5) What can be wrong with sperm? What percentage of sperm are usually normal? Some could be misshaped having pinheads, others have two heads, some lack tails, a third don’t move at all. Only 15 percent of their sperm is "serviceable"

(6) Where do sperm develop? Why could a fever disrupt sperm production for months? Chemical signals from the vaginal and cervical mucus seem to spark them to life. Released from the buffering folds of their seminal delivery blanket, they at first swim straight ahead.

(7) Describe in detail the three parts of a sperm cell.
 * The head is on part of of the sperm. The tip of the sperm head is the acrosome, a specialized sack of enzymes that help the sperm penetrate ancillary cells and connective tissue that surrounds the ripe. It has 23 chromosomes and half of the DNA is in the sperm.
 * Then there is the middle that consists of mitochondria that lend the sperm its motility.
 * Then there is the tail that helps the sperm move. It has a bundle of 11 entwined filaments that thrashes and propels a sperm forward at the estimable pace of one-twelfth of an inch per minute, the equivalent of a human striding at four miles an hour.

(8) How do the sperm react to being in the female reproductive tract? How do they know where to go? They linger in the cervical mucus for a couple of days, or cross the cervix and enter the uterus. They know where to go when an egg bursts from its ovarian follicle and has been plucked by a fallopian tube, sperm can sense its signature, a telltale shift in calcium ions.The eggs explode their enzyme sacks prematurely, loosening the corridor for other so it is easier for the sperm to enter.

(9) How is the egg only fertilized by one sperm? The sperm find their way to the final barrier, which is th eggs' plasma membrane. The egg choses one sperm to come and "be absorbed into its rich inner sanctum."