Swimming by Spinning: Spinning-Top Type Rotations Regularize Sperm Swimming Into Persistently Progressive Paths in 3D.

Abstract

Sperm swimming is essential for reproduction, with movement strategies adapted to specific environments. Sperm navigate by modulating the symmetry of their flagellar beating, but how they swim forward with asymmetrical beats remains unclear. Current methods lack the ability to robustly detect the flagellar symmetry state in free-swimming spermatozoa, despite its importance in understanding sperm motility. This study uses numerical simulations to investigate the fluid mechanics of sperm swimming with asymmetrical flagellar beats. Results show that sperm rotation regularizes the swimming motion, allowing persistently progressive swimming even with asymmetrical flagellar beats. Crucially, 3D sperm head orientation, rather than the swimming path, provides critical insight into the flagellar symmetry state. Sperm rotations during swimming closely resemble spinning-top dynamics, with sperm head precession driven by the helical beating of the flagellum. These results may prove essential in future studies on the role of symmetry in microorganisms and artificial swimmers, as body orientation detection has been largely overlooked in favor of swimming path analysis. Altogether, this rotational mechanism provides a reliable solution for forward propulsion and navigation in nature, which would otherwise be challenging for flagella with broken symmetry.