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The epididymis secretes immobilin, a large glycoprotein that is responsible for the creating of the viscoelastic luminal environment that serves to mechanically immobilize spermatozoa until ejaculation. Immobilin is predominantly secreted into the proximal caput epididymidis prior to the acquisition of the potential for sperm motility.
Significantly, the low intra-abdominal sperm storage capacity of the echidna epididymis [2] [18] helped inform the role of the epididymis as a prime mover in the evolution of descended testes in mammals whereby lower extra-gonadal temperatures within the scrotal cauda epididymis reduces oxidative respiration of sperm, which enhances oxygen ...
[9] [10] [11] Moreover, this increase in scrotal storage of sperm corresponds with epididymis evolution from reptiles to mammals. The mechanism by which sperm storage in the epididymis is enhanced at lower extra-abdominal temperatures has been shown to be a consequence of the biophysics of oxygen availability and sperm oxidative respiration. [12]
The function of the blood–testis barrier may be to prevent an auto-immune reaction. [13] Mature sperm (and their antigens) emerge significantly after immune tolerance is set in infancy. [13] Since sperm are antigenically different from self-tissue, a male animal can react immunologically to his own sperm. The male can make antibodies against ...
The epididymis is a long whitish mass of tightly coiled tube. The sperm that are produced in the seminiferous tubules flow into the epididymis. During passage via the epididymis, the sperm undergo maturation and are concentrated by the action of ion channels located on the apical membrane of the epididymis. [2]
In humans and other large mammals, there are approximately 15 to 20 efferent ducts, which also occupy nearly one-third of the head of the epididymis. b) single entry, as seen in most small animals such as rodents, whereby the 3–6 ductules merge into a single small ductule before entering the epididymis. [citation needed]
A large part of the head end of the mesonephros atrophies and disappears; of the remainder the anterior tubules form the efferent ducts of the testicle; while the posterior tubules are represented by the ductuli aberrantes, and by the paradidymis, which is sometimes found in front of the spermatic cord above the head of the epididymis.
Together with hydrogen (H 2), oxygen is evolved by the electrolysis of water. The point of water electrolysis is to store energy in the form of hydrogen gas, a clean-burning fuel. The "oxygen evolution reaction (OER) is the major bottleneck [to water electrolysis] due to the sluggish kinetics of this four-electron transfer reaction."