Scientists have uncovered exactly how a human egg captures an incoming sperm to begin the process of fertilization and say their discovery could in future help couples who suffer from infertility. In a study in the journal Science, an international team of researchers found that a specific kind of sugar molecule makes the outer coat of the egg “sticky,” helping the egg and sperm bind together."The details we’ve discovered here fill in a huge gap in our knowledge of fertility and we hope they will ultimately help many of those people who currently cannot conceive,” said Anne Dell of Imperial College London, who worked on the study with scientists from the universities of Missouri and Hong Kong, and the Academia Sinica in Taiwan.
