• The Role of gold nanoparticles in the detection of sperm protamine levels as a biomarker of male infertility
  • monireh mahmoodi,1 rahil jannatifar,2,* elham asa,3 atefeh verdi,4
    1. Department of Biology, Faculty of Science, Arak University, Arak 3848177584, Iran
    2. Department of Reproductive Biology, Academic Center for Education Culture and Research (ACECR), Qom, Iran
    3. Department of Reproductive Biology, Academic Center for Education Culture and Research (ACECR), Qom, Iran
    4. Department of Reproductive Biology, Academic Center for Education Culture and Research (ACECR), Qom, Iran


  • Introduction: Approximately 40-50% of infertilities is related to males. Abnormal sperm chromatin structure is suggested as a significant cause of infertility. Protamines constitute a significant component of the sperm chromatin, and they play a vital role in the proper packaging of chromatin. The study, experimentally was designed to explore direct clinical naked eye colour -metric of semen protamines, the biochemical marker of male fertility, using heparin gold nanoparticles (HAuCl4 NP)
  • Methods: The method is easy prices, cheap and reliable primer indication. The gold nanoparticle prepared by reducing via hepronization under heating yield red colour solution; the size of nanoparticle ranged from 15-20 nm in checked by electronic microscope micrograph. The binding of HAuNPs to protamine was characterized by variation in the plasmon absorption spectra followed by a visibly observable colour change of the solution from red to blue
  • Results: We observed a red shift in the plasmon peak and the method exhibited linearity in the range of 10–100ng/mL with a detection limit of 5 ng/mL, which is much lower than that reported for colorimetric sensors of protamine. The colour change and the variation in the absorbance of HAuCl4 NP were highly specific for protamines in the presence of different interfering compounds and the method was successfully applied for determining protamine in semen. Also, the correlation between sperm DNA damage and concentration of protamine was showed
  • Conclusion: The method appears to be simple and would be very useful for diagnostic aids are inaccessible to the majority of the population
  • Keywords: Gold nanoparticles. Protamine. DNA. Sperm