How proteins roll the dice to determine bee sex

To date it has been unclear exactly how the sex of a bee is determined. A research team from Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (HHU) including biologists and chemists has now identified a key gene and the molecular mechanism ...

Metaphors for human fertilization are evolving, study shows

In a common metaphor used to describe human fertilization, sperm cells are competitors racing to penetrate a passive egg. But as critics have noted, the description is also a "fairy tale," rooted in cultural beliefs about ...

Mature sperm lack intact mitochondrial DNA, study finds

New research provides insight about the bedrock scientific principle that mitochondrial DNA—the distinct genetic code embedded in the organelle that serves as the powerplant of every cell in the body—is exclusively passed ...

Balance between proteins keeps sperm swimming swiftly

Sperm must swim swiftly to an egg in order to fertilize it, and so they have evolved hydrodynamic shapes. Most of the space in the head of sperm cells is taken up by the DNA they carry, so the cells coil up their DNA super ...

page 2 from 21