• Question: have you got any sperm cells in your lab and if you do what do you use them for

    Asked by charliesharp1 to Callum, Gina, Katie, Michelle, Sam on 15 Nov 2012.
    • Photo: Katie Howe

      Katie Howe answered on 15 Nov 2012:

      Hi charlie!

      In my lab now we mostly work on egg cells. But before I worked here I worked in a lab working with sperm.

      I was trying to work out if sperm from men who can’t have children is missing a particular molecule. So I did quite a lot of work with human sperm which was very interesting!

    • Photo: Michelle Linterman

      Michelle Linterman answered on 15 Nov 2012:

      Hi Charlie,

      In our lab we work on the immune system, the cells of the blood. So, the only sperm cells we have in our lab are the naturally occurring ones in the bodies of the boys in the lab 😉
      And we certainly don’t experiment on those!

      Michelle

    • Photo: Gina Tse

      Gina Tse answered on 15 Nov 2012:

      Hi Charlie,

      We don’t have any sperm cells in our lab, but we do have salmon sperm DNA! This is used for a method called ‘Southern blot’, which is used to look at DNA sequences.

    • Photo: Callum Johnston

      Callum Johnston answered on 16 Nov 2012:

      I don’t use sperm cells for my work either! But to check there is none in my lab I could use a UV light because semen shines bright under UV even if you cant see it normally!

Comments