Assessment of DNA integrity and morphology of ejaculated sperm from fertile and infertile men before and after cryopreservation

Cryopreservation of human spermatozoa is extensively used in artifical insemination and IVF programmes. Despite various advances in cryopreservation methodology, the recovery rate of functional post thaw spermatozoa remains mediocre, with sperm motility being significantly decreased after freezing. The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of cryopreservation on both DNA integrity and morphology of spermatozoa from fertile and infertile men. Semen samples were obtained from 17 fertile men and 40 infertile men. All samples were prepared by discontinuous Percoll density centrifugation ( 95.0:47.5). Samples were divided into aliquots to allow direct comparison of fresh and frozen spermatozoa from the same ejaculate. Aliquots for cryopreservation were mixed with a commercial cryoprotectant and frozen by static phase vapour cooling before plunging into liquid nitrogen. Thawing was carried out slowly at room temperature. Sperm DNA integrity was determined using a modified alkaline single cell gel electrophoresis ( comet ) assay and sperm morphology analysed using the Tygerberg criteria. DNA of semen and prepared sperm from fertile men was found to be unaffected by cryopreservation. In marked contrast, spermatozoa from infertile men were significantly damaged by freeze- thawing. Cryopreservation had a detrimental effect on morphology of semen and prepared sperm from fertile and infertile men.

Advertising Colonial Romance and Imperial Masculinity: The Promotion of Philip Meadows Taylor's Novels in Britain

The comments of Charles Kegan Paul, the Victorian publisher who was involved in publishing the novels of the nineteenth-century British-Indian author Philip Meadows Taylor as single volume reprints in the 1880s, are illuminating. They are indicative of the publisher's position with regard to publishing - that there was often no correlation between commercial success and the artistic merit of a work. According to Kegan Paul, a substandard or mediocre text would be commercially successful as long it met a perceived want on the part of the public. In effect, the ruminations of the publisher suggests that a firm desirous of acquiring commercial success for a work should be an astute judge of the pre-existing wants of consumers within the market. Yet Theodor Adorno, writing in the mid-twentieth century, offers an entirely distinctive perspective to Kegan Paul's observations, arguing that there is nothing foreordained about consumer demand for certain cultural tropes or productions. They in fact are driven by an industry that preempts and conditions the possible reactions of the consumer. Both Kegan Paul's and Adorno's insights are illuminating when it comes to addressing the key issues explored in this essay. Kegan Paul's comments allude to the ways in which the publisher's promotion of Philip Meadows Taylor's fictional depictions of India and its peoples were to a large extent driven in the mid- to late-nineteenth century by their expectations of what metropolitan readers desired at any given time, whereas Adorno's insights reveal the ways in which British-Indian narratives and the public identity of their authors were not assured in advance, but were, to a large extent, engineered by the publishing industry and the literary marketplace.