Evidence for evolution by natural selection has been at a premium in the biological sciences. Even now, with neo-Darwinism firmly ensconced as the central pillar of modern biology, a convincing example of natural selection generating evolutionary change always catches the eye. Indeed, in today's climate of ideologically motivated attacks on the teaching of modern evolutionary biology in certain...

A new experimental study has provided the first definitive evidence for conditional punishment of 'cheats' in a sperm-trading simultaneous hermaphrodite: the sea slug Chelidonura hirundinina. This also provides a rare unequivocal example of conditional reciprocity averting a 'tragedy of the commons' in biology.

Mitochondria, the energy-generating organelles, play a role in numerous cellular functions including adenosine triphosphate (ATP) production, cellular homeostasis, and apoptosis. Maternal inheritance of mitochondria and mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is universally observed in humans and most animals. In general, high levels of mitochondrial heteroplasmy might contribute to a detrimental effect on f...

Identifying fertilization molecules is key to our understanding of reproductive biology, yet only a few examples of interacting sperm and egg proteins are known. One of the best characterized comes from the invertebrate archeogastropod abalone (Haliotis spp.), where sperm lysin mediates passage through the protective egg vitelline envelope (VE) by binding to the VE protein vitelline envelope re...

Short-term storage of fish sperm is a simple and cost-effective process in fishery research from basic to applied perspectives. It has been used elucidate evaluate gamete biology quality, perform vitro fertilization, develop cryopreservation. Sperm short-term selective breeding, hatchery production advanced molecular investigations such as disease detection commercial species aquaculture well b...

Background Sperm cells are one of the most stellar and fascinating cells in all species. One of the most distinctive characteristic of these cells is their movement dynamics which can be observed through a light microscope. The first paper regarding sperm cell biology that appeared on PubMed was presented by Dr. W.F. Whitney (1). There, he showed the staining properties of spermatozoa and it wa...

Past studies have suggested that mouse sperm surface galactosyltransferase may participate during fertilization by binding N-acetylglucosamine (GIcNAc) residues in the zona pellucida. In this paper, we examined further the role of sperm surface galactosyltransferase in mouse fertilization. Two reagents that specifically perturb sperm surface galactosyltransferase activity both inhibit sperm-zon...

Inheritance of paternal genetic information requires proper sperm development and DNA packaging. A proteomic analysis of sperm chromatin in Caenorhabditis elegans has identified conserved proteins that are important for the transmission of sperm DNA and for male fertility. Published: 1 December 2006 Genome Biology 2006, 7:124 (doi:10.1186/gb-2006-7-12-244) The electronic version of this article...

An unusual cAMP signaling system mediates many of the events that prepare spermatozoa to meet the egg. Its components include the atypical, bicarbonate-stimulated, sperm adenylyl cyclase and a cAMP-dependent protein kinase (PKA) with the unique catalytic subunit termed Calpha(2) or C(s). We generated mice that lack Calpha(2) to determine its importance in the events downstream of cAMP productio...