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Fertilization

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Nature volume 456, pages 586–587 (2008)Cite this article

The mammalian egg coat participates in fertilization and prevents more than one sperm from entering the egg. Structural data pinpoint a region common to egg-coat proteins that might mediate these functions.

Eggs are surrounded by one or more extracellular coats that take part in fertilization. Mammalian eggs have a single coat, the zona pellucida, which consists of long, interconnected fibrils constructed of a few proteins1. Mouse zona-pellucida proteins are called ZP1, ZP2 and ZP3, with these last two serving as sperm receptors during fertilization1,2. All three proteins have a characteristic region known as the ZP domain3, which also occurs in related proteins that make up the coat of fish, frog and bird eggs. What's more, the ZP domain is not restricted to egg-coat proteins, but is present in hundreds of extracellular proteins found in virtually all multicellular organisms.

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Figure 1: ZP-domain proteins of the mouse egg.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Paul M. Wassarman is in the Department of Developmental and Regenerative Biology, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, 1 Gustave L. Levy Place, New York, New York 10029, USA. paul.wassarman@mssm.edu,

    Paul M. Wassarman

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Wassarman, P. Welcome to the fold. Nature 456, 586–587 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/456586a

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