Proteomics of male infertility

Abstract

Screening of male infertility cases via clinical semen analysis is not apt to diagnose the causes in 30-50% of infertility cases. Such idiopathic cases with no known cause are difficult to monitor and thus provide momentum toward enhanced and sensitive diagnostic tools for infertility examinations. "Omics," the system biology approach to study the biological system on a large scale, includes proteomics as a newcomer. The era of clinical proteomics in combination with bioinformatics has emerged as a new tool to identify novel molecular markers for pathology. The supremacy of proteomics technology to characterize the proteome content of a cell or tissue on a large scale has enabled it to explicate both global and targeted proteins. Both seminal plasma and sperm serve to have the potential to be a preliminary material for identifying protein signatures related to infertility. The current chapter illustrates the lacunae allied with the clinical semen analysis for infertility investigations and exemplifies the role of clinical semen proteomics in male infertility identification.