Biochemical controls: how sperm and egg say hello (Introduction)

by David Turell , Friday, October 18, 2024, 18:21 (34 days ago) @ David Turell

It takes three proteins:

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-03319-z?utm_source=Live+Audience&utm_cam...

"The AlphaFold program, which predicts protein structures , identified a trio of proteins that team up to work as matchmakers between the gametes. Without them, sexual reproduction might hit a dead end in a wide range of animals, from zebrafish to mammals.

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"Andrea Pauli, a molecular biologist at the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology in Vienna and her colleagues, began their work in zebrafish , a vertebrate that also releases its eggs and sperm into the surrounding water. And to bypass the difficulties of working with membrane proteins in the laboratory, the team used AlphaFold to predict interactions between proteins.

"AlphaFold predicted that three sperm proteins work together to form a complex. Two of these proteins were previously known to be important for fertility. Pauli and her colleagues then confirmed that the third is also critical for fertility in both zebrafish and mice, and that the three proteins interact with one another.

"The team also found that, in zebrafish, the trio creates a place for an egg protein to bind, providing a mechanism by which the two cells could recognize one another. “It’s a way to say, ‘Sperm, you found an egg’ and ‘Egg, you found a sperm’,” says Andreas Blaha, a biochemist at the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology and co-author of the paper.

"The findings might one day yield a way to screen people struggling with infertility, to find out whether problems with this complex could be the cause, says Wright.

"And the results highlight a role for AlphaFold in studying fertilisation, he adds. “We’re limited in terms of experiments,” he says. “It might be that these modelling studies have an important role to play in the future.'”

Comment: in the actual article the authors show the similarity of the protein molecules in zebrafish, mice, and humans. Once designed the mechanism is conserved throughout evolution. Finally finding the mechanism that had to exist. Only design could achieve this.