The term sperm refers to the male reproductive cells. In the types of sexual reproduction known as anisogamy and oogamy, there is a marked difference in the size of the gametes with the smaller one being termed the "male" or sperm cell. The human sperm cell is haploid, so that its 23 chromosomes can join the 23 chromosomes of the female egg to form a diploid cell.
Malaria is known as a disastrous disease, with 247 million cases and 619,000 deaths reported in 2021 alone.
New research reveals the genes that likely allowed whales to grow to giant sizes compared to their ancestors, reports a study published in Scientific Reports.
The male reproductive system is a hotspot for the introduction of new genes. Perhaps that might assist in understanding why fathers tend to pass on more new mutations than mothers do. However, it does not explain why older fathers pass on more mutations than younger fathers.
Florida State University College of Medicine researchers have linked aspartame, an artificial sweetener found in nearly 5,000 diet foods and drinks, to anxiety-like behavior in mice.
A team of researchers discovered that the activity of sperm cells is attributable in part to the individual DNA make-up of these cells, rather than just male genetics.
Corals bred in public aquaria provide novel research opportunities and a healthy stock for outplanting into the wild, essential components of a thriving future for coral reef ecosystems, which support around 25% of all life in Earth's oceans.
Sperm cells have compact bundles of DNA, yet exactly how and why sperm cell nuclei are condensed in flowering plants has been a mystery, until now.
Meiotic drivers, which are a sort of selfish gene, are, in fact, selfish. They are found in nearly all species’ genomes, including humans, and unfairly convey their genetic information to more than half of their offspring, resulting in infertility and impaired organism health.
Ancient viral remnants in the human genome are active in both healthy and diseased tissues, restricting their applicability as disease indicators, according to a study published on October 18th, 2022, in the open access journal PLOS Biology by Aidan Burn at Tufts University in Boston, USA and colleagues.
Research conducted by the University of California, Berkeley, found that individual distinctions in human DNA matter less as people age and become more susceptible to aging disorders like diabetes and cancer.
Sperm actually swim better together when they are swimming against the current. Contrary to common belief, spermatozoa frequently cooperate to go through the female reproductive system in a variety of mammalian species, contradicting the notion that the fastest and fittest male reproductive cell wins the fertilization race.
A groundbreaking study from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai found that astronauts are more likely to experience mutations that could be connected to spaceflight and increase their lifetime risk of acquiring cancer and heart disease.
In a discovery that challenges over a century of evolutionary conventional wisdom, corals have been shown to pass somatic mutations – changes to the DNA sequence that occur in non-reproductive cells – to their offspring.
The Prussian carp is considered one of the most successful invasive fish species in Europe. Its ability to reproduce asexually gives it a major advantage over competing fish.
There are several “selfish genetic elements” in the human genome that do not appear to benefit their hosts but instead appear to exist only to reproduce themselves.
Many people may not realize that the humble sea urchin is a titan when it comes to the study of biology. Now, researchers from Japan have discovered that sea urchins could help biological studies go further than ever before.
RIKEN scientists have extracted and grown stem cells that give way to the mouse yolk sac for the first time in the laboratory, boosting the potential of generating mouse embryos from stem cells in the coming years.
Extra copies of a piece of DNA partly explain insensitivity to chemotherapy in germ cell cancer, a new study shows.
Primordial germ cell-like cells (PGCLCs), generated in vitro from the stem cells of rats, undergo gametogenesis in vivo and yield normal rat offspring, a new study demonstrates.
The female genital tract can be a hostile environment for conception. Out of about 100 million sperm, only a few hundred make it to the fallopian tubes.