Vibrational characterization of female gametes: a comparative study

In the last few years, vibrational spectroscopies have been widely applied in biology and medicine, as a synergic support to commonly used analytical and diagnostic techniques. This review summarizes the relevant researches carried out by using FTIR and Raman spectroscopy on oviparous and mammalian gametes, including human ones. We report the more recent applications of vibrational microspectroscopy to the study of female gametes, in animal and human models, to improve the knowledge on reproductive mechanisms and in ART practices.