i tried various methods followed by many references, i got clumping of sperm, and salt particles are deposited on sperm and also sperm are shrink so how to prepare the sperm for sem? if you know help me.
Proper fixation is critical. We have used a buffered media with glutaraldehyde (electron microscopy grade) at 5 °C before sending it to our microscopy service for further processing. Remember that the osmolalilty is critical, especially with fish spermatozoa. You have to prevent activation, thus using a medium isoosmotic to seminal plasma. If fixation goes well, usually a typical SEM protocol should work.
I work with mammalian semen, but i have not really worked on fish. but i will suggest you to do washing. This technique uses dilution and centrifugation. A sperm wash solution like coelomic fluid to get rid of the seminal plasma and other materials, before the SEM protocols.
I can refer you to one study have done before on sturgeon spermatozoa which may show you the way. In that work our colleagues fixed sperm samples with 2.5% glutaraldehyde in 0.1M phosphate buffer, stored at 4 ◦C and samples were postfixed and washed repeatedly for 2 h at 4 ◦C in 4% osmium tetroxide and dehydrated through an acetone series.
You may find more details the procedure on :
Hatef, A., Alavi, S.M.H., Baradaran Noveiri, S., Poorbagher, H., Alipour, A.R., Pourkazemi, M. and Linhart, O., (2011). Morphology and fine structure of Acipenser persicus (Acipenseridae, Chondrostei) spermatozoon: Inter-species comparison in Acipenseriformes. Animal Reproduction Science, 123: 81-88.
I have never worked with sperm before however we work with many different cells types...to prepare any of our samples we dilute samples (~5ml) in PBS, filter through a track-etched polycarbonate filter. This is followed by a series of ethanol washes (2ml each of 50%, 75%, 85%, 95% and 100%). The filter is air dried and the mounted and gold coated. This has worked for all sample types prepared to date.
Hope that helps
Sci Rep. 2015 Mar 30;5:9505. doi: 10.1038/srep09505.
A mobile biosafety microanalysis system for infectious agents.