When the sperm meets the egg

ack

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May 6, 2010
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Scientists Just Captured The Flash of Light That Sparks When a Sperm Meets an Egg

For the first time ever, scientists have captured images of the flash of light that sparks at the very moment a human sperm cell makes contact with an egg.

The phenomenon has been observed in animals before, but no one’s ever seen the spark of human conception. And what’s even more incredible is the fact that some eggs burn brighter than others, which is a direct indication of their ability to develop into a healthy embryo, a team from Northwestern University found.

So why do sparks literally fly at the moment of conception? Back in 2011, the Northwestern team discovered that sparks of zinc exploded at the point of conception in mice.

It took them a few years to figure out how to image this event, but by 2014, they’d managed to film the event for the first time ever, and watched as billions of zinc atoms were released at the exact moment when a mammal's egg is pierced by a sperm cell.

Using a new fluorescent sensor that's able to track the movements of zinc in live cells, the team caught a glimpse of an egg’s zinc-storage capabilities, and found some 8,000 zinc compartments, each one containing around 1 million zinc atoms, just ripe for exploding. The tiny 'fireworks' that result were found to last for about 2 hours after fertilisation.

Now, the same team has managed to film this event occurring in a human egg at the point of conception.

"It was remarkable," says one of the team, Teresa Woodruff. "We discovered the zinc spark just five years ago in the mouse, and to see the zinc radiate out in a burst from each human egg was breathtaking."




https://www.sciencealert.com/scient...-of-light-that-sparks-when-sperm-meets-an-egg
 

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