Biochemical changes that put sperm 'in the mood' identified.Byline: ANI Washington, April 13 (ANI): Making a significant advance towards new infertility treatments and a male contraceptive pill, scientists at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, at Troy, N.Y.; coeducational; founded and opened 1824 as Rensselaer School; chartered 1826. It was called Rensselaer Institute from 1837 to 1861. have identified key biochemical changes biochemical changes (bī·ō·keˈmik· that put sperm "in the mood" for fertilization. Dr. Mark D. Platt, a researcher from the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, notes that sperm cannot fertilize an egg immediately after entering the female reproductive tract. He points out that sperm must acquire this ability after undergoing an activation process called "capacitation capacitation /ca·pac·i·ta·tion/ (kah-pas?i-ta´shun) the process by which spermatozoa in the ampullary portion of a uterine tube become capable of going through the acrosome reaction and fertilizing an oocyte. ". He further highlights the fact that this process involves phosphorylation-common biological modification that causes cellular activities to be turned "on" by the addition of phosphate molecules to certain amino acids within proteins. However, the specific biochemical details have been a deep mystery. Platt and his colleagues used laboratory mice, and compared the extent of phosphorylation phosphorylation, chemical process in which a phosphate group is added to an organic molecule. In living cells phosphorylation is associated with respiration, which takes place in the cell's mitochondria, and photosynthesis, which takes place in the chloroplasts. in both capacitated and non-capacitated sperm samples. The researchers identified 44 peptides exhibiting differential phosphorylation, on 59 specific amino acids, suggesting that modification of those particular sites was essential for the capacitation process. The relative ratio of phosphorylation between the capacitated and non-capacitated samples were also reported, providing the first biochemical description of what puts sperm "in the mood". The study appears in ACS' Journal of Proteome pro·te·ome n. The complete set of proteins that are produced by the genes of an organism. proteome the entire complement of proteins produced by a cell. Research, a monthly ublication. (ANI) Copyright 2009 Asian News International The Asian News International (ANI) agency provides multimedia news to China and 50 bureaus in India. It covers virtually all of South Asia since its foundation and presently claims, on its official website, to be the leading South Asia-wide news agency. (ANI) - All Rights Reserved. Provided by Syndigate.info an Albawaba.com company |
|
||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion