Discovery about fertilization points way to possible malaria vaccine

If the first step in reproduction, binding of egg and sperm, is controlled by a single gene per species, then the binding step would serve as a gatekeeper to prevent incompatible cells from getting close, Dr. Snell said. Evolutionarily, this scheme makes sense, he said, because it would take only a mutation in the single gene that controls egg-sperm binding to create a new species.

“There has been a lot of speculation about species-specific egg-sperm binding and fusion and whether the two steps involve the same or different proteins, but no one had the molecules to show this,” Dr. Snell said. “We now have those molecules to show that a new species wouldn’t have to reinvent the wheel to control fusion.”

Other UT Southwestern researchers involved in the study were first author Dr. Yanjie Liu and Dr. Jue Ning, both postdoctoral researchers in cell biology; Dr. Jimin Pei, postdoctoral researcher in biochemistry; and Dr. Nick Grishin, associate professor of biochemistry.

Researchers from Imperial College London, University of Nottingham, The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and the University of California, Irvine, also participated in the study.

The work was supported by the National Institutes of Health, the London-based Medical Research Council, the Wellcome Trust, the Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine, the Swedish Research Council, and the Biology and Pathology of Malaria Parasite Network of Excellence of the European Commission.

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Dr. William Snell -- http://www.utsouthwestern.edu/findfac/professional/0,2356,16830,00.html