Detection of inorganic elements in single boar spermatozoa by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry

Trace elements play an important role in the spermatogenesis, maturation, and fertilization of sperm. Accurate determination of elemental content of sperm cells, especially at the level of single sperm, is of great significance to evaluate the quality of boar semen, which affects the boar's reproductive health and eventually the pig breeding industry. Here we develop a simple method to determine trace elements in single boar's sperm cells by time resolved inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS). Effect of dwell time of ICP-MS on the signals of the sperms were investigated and optimized. Signal profiles of single sperm cells and elemental dis-tributions of P, Mg, K, and Zn in normal sperm cells were obtained with dwell time at 0.1 ms. Experimental parameters affecting the adsorption of cisplatin by sperm cells were studied. Interestingly, the incubated Pt in sperm cells shows different signal trends to the endogenous P and Mg under the ultrasonic treatment that separated the sperm's head and tail, indicating elements with variable contents and locations in the sperm cells may be differentiated by the proposed method. The single-cell determination of sperm elements by ICP-MS would be useful for studying sperm signal transduction and relevant physiological topics.