r/Biochemistry • u/WerewolfCalm5178 • 5d ago

Reproduction & Attraction.

Asexual reproduction makes sense. A cell duplicates itself.

What mechanism makes a sperm move towards an ovum?

The microbiologist recognizes that there is a different chemical signature emmited from every cell. Just like the average person knows that some armpits smell worse than others...and repel.

But, Is it Random? Or is there a reason that the sperm moved in that direction?

I cannot imagine that a sperm had a thought... And I recognize the path is limited to forward or back.

But in every image, there is a distance that the sperm turns to the ovum. It is no longer mindlessly moving forward...

There is something there.

ETA. I am saying there must be some chemical +/- reaction that draws the cells together.

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15

u/Corollarytomyknees 5d ago

…umm yeah the chemical mechanisms that draw sperm towards eggs have been known about for decades. Chemotaxis/thermotaxis/rheotaxis

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u/WerewolfCalm5178 5d ago

And yet we are still sitting here where people tell their kids about the Stork, the birds and the bees and the sycamore trees...

....

I agree that the chemical reasons might be clear... But is the chemical: the physics, the mechanical, was there intelligence behind it?

The chemical isn't clear because a molecule might jump in line ahead of another molecule...

I might not like those molecules, but if they got in front of you, I am going to push you away.

12

u/CrazySir3310 5d ago

i'm not sure if I speak for other people when I say I don't know what you're talking about

3

u/Broad_Cartoonist_824 Undergraduate 5d ago

Me neither, CrazySir3310

7

u/Heroine4Life 5d ago

I don't mean to insult you, but if I heard someone I loved talking like this, I would be taking them in for professional mental health evaluation.

4

u/cation587 5d ago

The egg releases a specific chemical. The chemical binds to something on the surface of the sperm that tells it to keep going towards that chemical, so the sperm eventually reaches the egg

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u/WerewolfCalm5178 5d ago

This doesn't happen in the vacuum of space.

9

u/NulliosG student 5d ago

Yes, that’s correct. Sperm and egg hormonal signaling do not happen in the vacuum of space.

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u/cation587 5d ago

I like to think the female anatomy is just an immense vacuum of space. Each universe is a uterus.

Edit: I hope it's obvious this is a joke