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AlphaFold reveals how sperm and egg hook up in intimate detail
Three sperm proteins work together as matchmakers to enable fertilisation in vertebrates.
The finding, published 17 October in Cell, unravels the previous notion that just two proteins — one on the egg and one on the sperm — would be sufficient to ensure fertilisation, says Enrica Bianchi, a reproductive biologist at the University of Rome ‘Tor Vergata’, who was not involved in the study. The interactions between these proteins are often weak and fleeting, and it is difficult to harvest enough eggs and sperm from some of researchers’ favourite laboratory animals, including mice, for extensive experiments. “If you take a textbook off the shelf and look up fertilisation, you’ll read all about sea urchins,” says Gavin Wright, a biochemist at the University of York, UK, who was not involved in the study.
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