Enigma of Spermatozoal Deoxyribonucleic Acid and Male Infertility: A Review

SUMMARY Various authors have reported that the amount of deoxyribonucleic acid ( dna ) in ejaculated spermatozoa from fertile males was different from that from infertile males. Contrary to these reports in which attempts were made to correlate infertility and atypical spermatozoal dna measured after staining with the Feulgen reaction, results of several biochemical investigations did not indicate any such correlation. The resultant confusion was further compounded when several groups of workers independently reported diametrically different observations although they used essentially the same method of measuring Feulgen- dna . Because of this confusion and since a form of infertility is possibly caused by a nonmorphologically expressed defect in the chromatin of the gamete, the question of an association between spermatozoal dna and male infertility has been re-examined in recent years in several laboratories around the world. From these studies, ample evidence has been accrued to incriminate the nuclear protein bound to the dna as being one factor responsible for anomalous results when the Feulgen reaction is quantitatively applied to spermatozoa. In turn, these results suggested the existence of male infertility because of a defect in the spermatozoal nuclear protein or in its binding to dna . The dna seems to have been absolved of primary involvement.