The elasticity of male fertility by means of phonon microscopy

生育率是一个全球性的多方面健康问题，其中不孕症和节育是迫切关注的问题。全世界约有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现有的测试进行诊断。与此同时，精子数量在过去50年中有所减少，这表明不孕症只会增加。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，以便应对生殖健康的挑战。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。我们建议使用一个跨学科的方法，使用声子显微镜，第一次，精子细胞的弹性与亚细胞分辨率。我们期望弹性可以用作不育的生物标志物，并可以进一步了解受精的生物学。

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.