The sperm stewing in its own ROS—in the plastic Petri dish

Endogenously produced reactive oxygen species (ROS) are essential to life, being involved in many different biological functions. However, when overproduced, or when the levels of antioxidants become severely depleted, these reactive species become highly harmful, causing oxidative stress through the oxidation of biomolecules (1). Oxidative stress is implicated in the etiology of several diseases and in aging. In their paper entitled Genesis on diamonds II: contact with diamond enhances human sperm performance by 300% (2).