Profiling signaling proteins in human spermatozoa: Biomarker identification for sperm quality evaluation

Abstract In this study we unraveled human spermatozoa signaling pathways and correlated the activity of sperm signaling proteins with clinical data. Thirty seven semen samples were used and basic semen parameters, sperm DNA fragmentation and the expression levels of 75 protein kinases and the phosphorylation/cleavage patterns of 18 signaling proteins were evaluated to determine the correlation between semen basic parameters and the expression and activity of signaling proteins. We have contributed towards establishing a biomarker “fingerprint” to assess sperm quality based on molecular parameters.