Abstract: With the development of mass spectrometry, the detection of human sperm proteins has been realized high throughput, and the proteomics has become an important tool to study sperm. We reviewed the advances in the proteomics of normal human sperm, the proteomics of sperm capacitation, and the proteomics of oligo-, astheno-, and terato spermia. The proteomic study on the structure, function and abundance change of many proteins, such as glyceraldehyde-3 phosphate dehydrogenase, testis specific (GAPDHS), outer dense fiber protein (ODF), the A kinase anchoring protein (AKAP) and heat shock proteins (HSP), will be helpful for understanding spermatogenesis, sperm function and fertilization mechanism. And some of the key proteins selected, such as lectin galactoside-binding, soluble 3 binding protein (LGALS3BP), histone cluster1, H2ba (HIST1H2BA) and mitochondrial malate dehydrogenase 2 (MDH2), can be developed as possible clinical targets for the diagnosis of male infertility. These proteins also have potential significance for exploring the mechanism of male infertility and male new contraceptive.

Key words: Spermatozoa, Proteomics, Protein array analysis, Mass spectrometry