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

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 Monday June 15 2020, @07:51PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 15 2020, @07:51PM (#1008288)

    Good research doesn't generate clicks.