{"id":21802,"date":"2016-02-08T21:48:53","date_gmt":"2016-02-09T05:48:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2016\/02\/3d-printed-spermbots-could-fix-lazy-sperm-to-treat-male-infertility"},"modified":"2017-06-04T10:58:35","modified_gmt":"2017-06-04T17:58:35","slug":"3d-printed-spermbots-could-fix-lazy-sperm-to-treat-male-infertility","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2016\/02\/3d-printed-spermbots-could-fix-lazy-sperm-to-treat-male-infertility","title":{"rendered":"3D-printed \u2018spermbots\u2019 could fix lazy sperm to treat male infertility"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"display: block; margin: 0 auto; width: 100%; aspect-ratio: 4\/3; object-fit: contain;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Ww-x-VIFh-Q?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope;\n   picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>A team of researchers from Germany have developed what could become a revolutionary treatment for male infertility \u2014 they build spermbots. The key is a tiny metal helix that attaches to individual sperm cells, allowing them to move more effectively. You can think of it like a prosthetic tail for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.geek.com\/tag\/sperm\">sperm<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Male fertility issues are usually not related to having an unusually low sperm count, but to having sperm with low motility. That is, they don\u2019t get around very well. Each sperm has a copy of half of a man\u2019s genome in the \u201chead\u201d portion. The tail is actually a flagella with banks of energy-producing mitochondria to power its movement. If either the tail or power source don\u2019t work correctly, a sperm <a href=\"http:\/\/www.geek.com\/tag\/cells\/\">cell<\/a> will have trouble reaching and fertilizing an egg.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.geek.com\/science\/3d-printed-spermbots-could-fix-lazy-sperm-to-treat-male-infertility-1646693\/\" target=\"_blank\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A team of researchers from Germany have developed what could become a revolutionary treatment for male infertility \u2014 they build spermbots. The key is a tiny metal helix that attaches to individual sperm cells, allowing them to move more effectively. You can think of it like a prosthetic tail for sperm. Male fertility issues are [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":395,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1489,11,1499],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21802","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-3d-printing","category-biotech-medical","category-cyborgs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21802","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/395"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21802"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21802\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62959,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21802\/revisions\/62959"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}