Chemotaxis Modelling for Sperm Motility

9 Jul 2018, 11:30
30m
New Law School/--106 (University of Sydney)

New Law School/--106

University of Sydney

100
Oral Presentation Minisymposium: From solitary swimmers to coordinated groups: modelling motion in fluids at very low Reynolds number From solitary swimmers to coordinated groups: Modelling motion in fluids at very low Reynolds number

Speaker

John LaGrone (Tulane University)

Description

An important aspect in the study of reproduction is how sperm are guided toward an egg for fertilization. One such mechanism is the process of chemotaxis, in which the sperm detect changes in concentration (namely of Ca+) in the fluid environment and utilize these changes to alter the waveform of their flagellar beat. This change in beat form results in changes to the swimming path. We model the swimming sperm using a Kirchhoff elastic rod model coupled with the method of regularized Stokeslets for the fluid motion. In order to simulate the effect of chemical concentrations, we employ a stochastic decision making process.

Primary authors

John LaGrone (Tulane University) Ms Andrea Burns (Tulane University) Ms Tulia Glaeser (Tulane University) Ms Colette Reasonover (Tulane University) Prof. Ricardo Cortez (Tulane University)

Presentation Materials

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