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Human Eggs Seem to Exhibit Preferences for Particular People's Sperm, Study Shows

posted by martyb on Sunday June 14 2020, @09:01PM   Printer-friendly
from the hatch-me-if-you-can? dept.

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for RandomFactor:

Human Eggs Seem to Exhibit Preferences For Particular People's Sperm, Study Shows:

After all that time and effort agonising over whether a potential partner even likes you, then trying to decide if they're the right person to take on the massive endeavour of parenthood with, your eggs can basically turn around and say "yeah, nah".

"The idea that eggs are choosing sperm is really novel in human fertility," said clinical embryologist Daniel Brison from Manchester University in the UK.

[...] Human eggs release compounds called chemoattractants into this fluid, which chemically communicates with sperm. While the exact chemicals are yet to be identified (some researchers suspect progesterone is involved), whatever it is can trigger sperm to change swimming directions.

The researchers exposed sperm to follicular fluid from two females (a partner and a non-partner) and observed where the sperm accumulated.

[...] "Follicular fluid from different females consistently and differentially attracts sperm from specific males," the team wrote in their paper, finding that eggs attracted between 18 to 40 percent more sperm from their preferred males.

[...] The team cautions that some of the experiment's conditions could affect the accuracy of the results. For example, the IVF eggs they used had been through treatments that may have changed some biological processes.

Also, the concentrations of sperm were much higher than natural (20,000 sperm per egg instead of the average of around 250) and they were placed quite close to the egg - which may minimise differences in the effects of chemoattractants.

Journal Reference:
Chemical signals from eggs facilitate cryptic female choice in humans, Proceedings of the Royal Society B (DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2020.0805)

 
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 14 2020, @10:26PM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 14 2020, @10:26PM (#1007919)
    From the tfa :

    Further down the line, once we know that an egg and sperm are not happy with each other, there might be a way to convince them our choice of partner is the right one after all.

    Those mechanisms had millions of years to evolve, overriding them, sounds like a bad plan. Please don't pollutes the germline.

  • (Score: 2) by linkdude64 on Sunday June 14 2020, @11:37PM (3 children)

    by linkdude64 (5482) on Sunday June 14 2020, @11:37PM (#1007924)

    Too late - modern medicine already exists and saves thousands of lives a day.

    • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday June 15 2020, @02:23AM (2 children)

      by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Monday June 15 2020, @02:23AM (#1007979) Journal

      Sex reassignment age pushed to pre-conception time? (grin)

      --
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford

      • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 15 2020, @02:42AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 15 2020, @02:42AM (#1007983)

        That would be best. Early treatment gives better outcomes.

      • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday June 15 2020, @04:14PM

        by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Monday June 15 2020, @04:14PM (#1008183) Journal

        Sex reassignment age pushed to pre-conception time? (grin)

        As long as they don't limit the reassignment choices to only two genders.

        What about the other 89 (minus two) genders?

        --
        The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.