Postdoc in the Pauli Group at IMP Vienna studying fertilization | #scicomm | #mentoring | #scienceandfaith | #DiversityandInclusion | Salvadoran scientist 🇸🇻
Victoria Deneke
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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! 🧵👇
Video
We hope this work SPARKs your curiosity (and your feedback)! ✨
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
This project has been possible thanks to an amazing team, starting with co-first author Johannes Suwita, and our mentor Andi @pauligroup.bsky.social. We have had the privilege to work with the lab of Masahito Ikawa for all mouse work, in particular Haoting, Shingo and Lu. Photo: 2025 Japan visit!
We propose that SPARK couples sperm-egg recognition to membrane fusion by:
1. Binding egg receptors
2. Undergoing conformational changes
3. ... and leading to sperm-egg fusion!
Big thank you to all co-authors who contributed to numerous aspects of this work: Karin, Andreas, Aleq, @murielmirus.bsky.social, our @viennabiocenter.bsky.social @impvienna.bsky.social Bioinfo & Proteomics Team, @jeremyahollis.bsky.social, @arburga.bsky.social, and @hankamarvan.bsky.social!
How does SPARK get activated for fusion? Intriguingly, we found that adding soluble recombinant Bouncer (the egg receptor in fish) to sperm, rescued fertilization with eggs lacking Bouncer. This suggests that the egg receptor may prime SPARK for fusion.
From an evolutionary perspective, we find that TMDD1 and FAM187 are conserved beyond vertebrates. A recent preprint from Amber Krauchunas’s lab shows that FAM187/spe-40 is also essential for fertilization in C. elegans! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
