Spermatozoon, or sperm as most people know them, need to attach themselves to the egg and get inside to begin the process of creating a new life. It happens millions of times each year, but until now, scientists were puzzled by how the sperm got stuck to the egg.
Now a team of scientists have discovered exactly how this happens: the human egg is coated with a particular type of sugar that causes the sperm to "stick" to the egg long enough to deposit its load of DNA. The sugar, known as sialyl-lewis-x sequence with the highly appropriate acronym of SLeX, covers the surface of the egg.
“This exciting research is providing the first insights into the molecular events occurring at the very beginning of human life. The details we’ve discovered here fill in a huge gap in our knowledge of fertility and we hope they will ultimately help many of those people who currently cannot conceive,” said Professor Anne Dell, who led the team that discovered the SLeX sugars on the egg surface, as reported by BioScholar.
The scientists worked us mass-spectrometry, which breaks down chemical compounds to small bits that are identifiable by their molecular weight. Although mass-spectrometry works with very small amounts of material, the scientists had even smaller amounts to begin working with--a human egg is about the size of a printed period.
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