The elasticity of male fertility by means of phonon microscopy

生育率是一个全球性的多方面的健康问题，其中不孕不育和节育是迫切需要关注的问题。全球约有16%的夫妇无法生育，造成经济和情感压力。三分之一的男性不育病例无法通过任何可用的检测得到诊断。与此同时，精子数量在过去50年里有所下降，这表明不育症只会增加。与此同时，由于能源、耕地和不可再生材料等资源的可获得性有限，人口增长威胁到可持续性。这些问题要求更好地了解生殖生物学，以便能够应对生殖健康方面的挑战。通过诺丁汉大学和墨西哥国立自治大学的这项新合作，我们的目标是解决男性不育的一些挑战。我们建议使用一种跨学科的方法来使用声子显微镜，首次以亚细胞分辨率来表征精子细胞的弹性。我们希望弹性能被用作不育的生物标志物，并能为理解受精的生物学提供进一步的见解。

Fertility is a global-level multifaceted health problem where infertility and birth control are pressing concerns. Around 16% of couples worldwide are unable to procreate causing financial and emotional stress.One-third of male infertility cases cannot be diagnosed by any available test. In conjunction with this, sperm count has decreased in the last 50 years which suggests infertility will only increase. At the same time, population growth threatens sustainability given the finite availability of resources such as energy, farming land and non-renewable materials. These problems call for a better understanding of the biology of reproduction so the challenges of reproductive health can be addressed. With this new collaboration from the University of Nottingham and the National Autonomous University of Mexico, we aim to address some of the challenges of male infertility. We propose to use an interdisciplinary approach to use phonon microscopy, for the first time, to characterise the elasticity of sperm cells with sub-cellular resolution. We expect that elasticity can be used as a biomarker for sterility and can provide further insight into the understanding of the biology of fertilisation.