Behaviour of ejaculated spermatozoa from bull, boar and ram during thin-layer countercurrent partition in aqueous two-phase systems.

Ejaculated spermatozoa from bulls, boars and rams were subjected to thin-layer countercurrent partition in aqueous two-phase systems composed of dextran T500 and polyethylene glycol 6000 (PEG) in sucrose-based Hepes-buffered media. In the basal system, the great majority of spermatozoa tended to partition with the dextran-rich bottom phase; however, by including very low levels of phosphate, they could be made to partition increasingly with the PEG-rich top phase (complete at 10 mM phosphate). A procedure was developed for carrying out four separations simultaneously under identical conditions, whereby it could be shown that distribution varied with the number of spermatozoa in the sample. In the case of bull, the effect of cell number could be reduced considerably by inclusion of small quantities of seminal plasma in the phase system, but no such effect was found for ram or boar. Considerable variation in distribution pattern was seen between samples, which did not appear to be due to technical inconsistency. Livability in the phase systems was also variable, and we believe that PEG may exert a detergent-like effect on the sperm surface that is exacerbated in highly defined media free of protective proteins.