BIREFRINGENCE OF SPERMATOZOA

Abstract

In thermal denaturation experiments on sperm cells, described in the accompanying paper, it was found that squid sperm, when melted, lose both birefringence and morphological shape. Bull sperm, on the other hand, show no change of morphology, but their initial negative birefringence becomes positive. Since this suggested the existence of form birefringence, the influence of solvents of different refractive indices on the observed birefringence was investigated, using a new derivation of the Wiener form birefringence equations which allows direct comparison of Wiener's theory with experimental results. Bull sperm showed form birefringence both before and after melting, while squid sperm showed none. Quantitative application of the general form of the Wiener equations to these results gave values for the refractive index and intrinsic birefringence of bull sperm cells. Application of the specific forms of the Wiener equations showed that neither of these descriptions of idealized systems was adequate to describe completely the form birefringence of bull sperm, but that the equation for platelike submicroscopic structures was more nearly an accurate fit to the data than that for rodlike structures.