How three genes you’ve never heard of may influence human fertility

Image Source

Source: Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology (SICB) | Summary: Variation in egg-coat and sperm expressed genes influences fertility in diverse organisms, from sea stars to mice to humans.

"Researchers, including Hart, have found that in each of these diverse organisms, natural selection is acting on genetic aspects of the fertilization process, making some pairs of individuals more likely to conceive than others.

Hart's interest in the genetics of reproduction has focused mostly on sea stars and sea urchins. As a zoologist and population geneticist, he wants to know: how does one species split into two?

In a recent project working on these unassuming invertebrates, Hart and his colleagues discovered an exciting new piece of this evolutionary puzzle: the fertility rate of mated sea stars depends on what forms of reproductive genes they have. In other words, male and female sea stars with certain types of genes might successfully produce offspring, whereas sea stars with other combinations of gene pairs fail to reproduce.

To Hart, this finding suggested that, over time, genetic incompatibility could cause populations of sea stars to gradually separate into different species..."

Learn More >>