'You Didn't Win, Yet You Were Selected' New Theory of Conception

Biology textbooks have described human conception like this: the millions of sperm are thrown into a hazardous flight into the female reproductive tract and run to one, passive egg.

- Gurmeet Brar

The winner of the prize is the most fast, strongest or lucky swimmer and he fertilizes the ovum and brings about the miracle of life. In the 20th century, this narrative of the sperm race has influenced not just the science but also the metaphors of culture which focus on the competition, merit, and fate. However, a recent study that was recently published in Nature Cell Biology has shattered this belief. It is, as it happens, no lifeless prize. It is a dynamic and critical player, which chooses a partner with the help of complex chemical cues. You did not win a frantic dash. You were chosen.

The study, headed by Dr. Marcus Hale and his team of researchers with a wide range of expertise in the Reproductive Biology Laboratory of the University of Cambridge is the result of ten years of careful research. The scientists were able to observe real interactions between human eggs and sperm in controlled conditions using advanced microfluidic devices that modeled the fluid dynamics of the fallopian tubes as well as super-resolution microscopy and single cell proteomics. What they wrote contests the first principles in the reproductive science.

It is the release of chemotactic gradients, or molecular beacons that cause the movement of sperm that the egg produces, which lies at the heart of the discovery. Such signals are not mass communications, but specific invitations, which are adjusted by the receptors of the egg surface, and biochemical description of the approaching sperm. We watched sperm change their pathways within minutes of exposure to the secretions of the egg and this is what was explained by Dr. Hale in a press briefing at the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology. There are also the so-called compatible sperm that rush towards the egg, whereas the rest slow down or turn aside, as though they were pushed away by an unknown obstacle.