(a) A pollen grain containing the two sperm cells. It produces a pollen tube, which arrives at the ovule. After the arrival, one of the synergid cells degenerates and the pollen tube bursts to ...

ANY biologically aware parent who has started talking about the birds and the bees will have realised halfway through that what they are really discussing is flowers. Bees carry pollen grains from one ...

Who hasn't seen it before: the view through the microscope in which a sperm penetrates an egg cell and fertilises it. This fundamental step in procreation happens dynamically and seemingly without ...

Fertilisation might sound like a science class topic. But even if you haven’t thought much about it, a lot is happening inside your body long before a pregnancy test could show any result. Your eggs ...

An ETH Zurich research team has visualised the fertilisation dynamics of human egg cell for the first time using simulations on high-performance computers. The simulations show how a protein on the ...

The protein RGS2 can delay an egg’s development into an embryo in order to allow time for sperm to arrive and merge with the egg in a healthy fertilization process. The embryo cannot survive without ...

Sperm washing is a process performed to separate healthy, motile (moving) sperm from the collected semen sample. When semen is collected, it contains not only sperm but also dead or weak sperm, ...

Would-be parents are being offered a new form of IVF which allows fertilisation to take place inside the womb instead of in a laboratory. It is hoped the new technique, being used for the first time ...