MEN may hate asking for directions, or so the stereotype goes, but it seems sperm are happy to be told where to swim.
Microfluidics, the study of how fluids move at the microscopic level, is set to improve IVF treatment for couples in which the man has a low sperm count, say a team of doctors and engineers at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. They have found that the 300-micrometre-wide channels on a microfluidic chip can effectively direct sperm cells to eggs awaiting IVF.
“We can now use very small volumes of fluid to channel limited numbers of sperm right to the egg, instead of…
