An important feature for life is what embryos receive from mom and dad upon fertilization. Oddly enough, centrioles, the structures responsible for cell division and flagella movement, are given by the paternal gamete. How oocytes, the maternal gametes, lose centrioles and the importance of doing so for female fertility has been an enigma since the 1930s. A team led by Mónica Bettencourt-Dias at the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência (IGC; Portugal) have cracked this mystery, shedding light upon a critical mechanism whose deregulation leads to infertility, and that is important for the working of other cell types.
Tag: gamete
Mammalian Fertilization, Caught on Tape
The development of every animal in the history of the world began with a simple step: the fusion of a spermatozoon (the male gamete) with an oocyte, or egg (the female gamete). Despite the ubiquity of this process, the actual mechanisms through which fertilization occurs remain poorly understood. A new tool developed by a team of French biophysicists may soon shed light on this still-mysterious process, and has already captured highly detailed images of what happens when sperm and egg first touch.
IVG Represents a Long-Overdue Shift in Attitudes Toward Same-Sex Parents
In the not-so-distant future, same-sex couples may be able to have children that are biologically related to both of them. A recent article in the Journal of Law and the Biosciences outlines a new process known as in vitro gametogenesis, or IVG, through which scientists use stem cells—taken from embryos or adults—to create gametes, the technical name for eggs and sperm, regardless of gender. Scientists have already had partial success with IVG on mice, and were able to create offspring that came from a mixture of one gamete created through this new process and one created naturally.
A Gamete Matchmaker
During fertilization, some pairings of mussel sperm and eggs work better than others—but how do the best couples find one another in the open ocean? New research, published online Tuesday (March 20) in Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, raises that possibility that chemicals released by eggs may help sperm find not just any eggs, but the ones that will have the most successful fertilizations.
Adoption and Collaboration Reproduction – which path is right for you?
By Denise Seidelman, Esq.
Both adoption and collaborative reproduction (fertility options that involve third parties, such as gamete donors and gestational surrogates) …