[431] in Humor
HUMOR: Bio folklore about semen (yes, that's what I said)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Andrew A. Bennett)
Mon Aug 29 12:05:54 1994
To: humor@MIT.EDU
Date: Mon, 29 Aug 1994 10:02:11 EDT
From: "Andrew A. Bennett" <abennett@MIT.EDU>
Date: Sun, 28 Aug 1994 17:19:22 -0600 (MDT)
From: Espacionaute Spiff domine! <MATOSSIAN%ARIES@VAXF.Colorado.EDU>
From: bostic@CS.Berkeley.EDU (Keith Bostic)
Subject: ... if she were whipping up a batch of semen.
Forwarded-by: "Linda Branagan" <linda@z-code.com>
From: cpatil@leland.Stanford.EDU (Christopher Kashinath Patil)
Newsgroups: sci.bio
In article <2t6rhg$10m@agate.berkeley.edu>,
Wendy Toiwan Hui <whui@uclink.berkeley.edu> wrote:
>I pose several questions:
>
> 1. Can sperms survive long enough in the mouth in the first place
> in the presence of amylase to be seen swimming in the scope?
Amylase doesn't digest lipid or protein (the two main components of the sperm
head's membrane), so in itself it shouldn't cause degradation. The mouth
is about the same temperature as the female reproductive tract, so the temp
shouldn't kill the sperm either. It still seems pretty unlikely that sperm
would still be swimming in the mouth for any length of time, but I can't put
my finger on why exactly.
> 2. What would make semen salty? I attempted to do this in the
> exerpt below (a post to the folklore groups). In short,
> I concluded that it is probably from the mucus of the seminal
> fluids.
Most of the dry weight of sperm (as distinct from semen) is protein and
nucleic acid, which doesn't have a characteristic flavor. The flavor
comes from the seminal fluid, which I've not heard characterized as
'salty' so much as 'bitter' or 'tangy'. The latter two tastes come from
the high concentrations of citric acid and ascorbate (vitamin C) found
in the semen. Interestingly, the average ejaculatory volume contains
about 60 percent of the US RDA for vitamin C.
If semen does taste salty to you, it's probably because the average
ejaculatory volume contains about half a gram of sodium chloride --
what your grandmother would have called a "pinch", if she were whipping
up a batch of semen.
> 3. What is the molecular content of mucus? And would it confer
> saltiness?
Ever eaten boogers? That's mucus, and it is somewhat salty. Mucus is
composed primarily of mucopolysaccharides, which are basically starch
molecules whose sugar monomers have been aminated at specific sites.
The big molecules soak up water, giving them their glisten, and salt
follows the water by osmosis.
For the record, mucus is present at extremely low concentrations in
semen, but it's mainly accounted for by sloughing off the seminiferous
tubules. It isn't abundant enough to result in a salty taste -- most of
the salt mentioned above is free in solution.
The viscosity of semen is mainly due to the high concentration of sugars
and the broken sperm, whose free proteins and randomly coiling nucleic
acids make the liquid flow much more slowly than water.
I don't remember my sources for this, but I wrote a column about it (a
la "Ask Doctor Science") a few years ago, and the sources I used at the
time were all in the med school library under the call number for male
reproductive biology. I wish I could remember the titles, but suffice
it to say that I trusted them at the time.
--
Chris Patil Stanford University
cpatil@leland.stanford.edu Department of Biological Sciences
"That in our day such giant shadows are cast by such pygmies only shows
how late in the day it has become." -- Chargaff, referring to Watson & Crick
