How do sperm and egg fuse? Surprisingly, we still don’t fully know…
Our field has uncovered many pieces of the fertilization puzzle, but not how they fit together.
We identify ✨ SPARK ✨ - a conserved sperm complex that couples sperm-egg binding to fusion.
tinyurl.com/34cm4xat
Read on! 🧵👇
This was true detective work—full credit to Julian @jamesjulianross.bsky.social , who persisted until he uncovered this beautiful solution to a riddle that consumed our souls for years! Huge thanks as well to our many collaborators!
Lastly, how did KLMT-1 evolve? Turns out that a neutrally evolving beta-hairpin loop, was repurposed from a solvent exposed region of FARS-3 - in true tinkerer fashion, evolution used what was available to make a new binding interface
Our latest work is now online in NSMB: maternal yolk carries microRNAs from the intestine to embryos, shaping gene regulation and stress resilience in the next generation.
rdcu.be/fj8Er
#Epigenetics #microRNA #Inheritance @pasteur.fr @devstempasteur.bsky.social @erc.europa.eu
But how does this interaction cause toxicity? The predicted binding surface overlaps with known AIR-1 regulatory interfaces, suggesting mitosis may be dysregulated. In line with this hypothesis, we found that KLMT-1 overexpression causes various mitosis-related defects.