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This Spider’s Mate Breaks Her Genitals So She Can’t Have Sex Ever Again
Male animals can be greedy about paternity. They have evolved a ton of different strategies to help them monopolize a female’s eggs. Beating up rivals is a general favourite. Some species use long bouts of sex to keep females away from new mates. Still others stop up female genitals with gooey plugs or bits of…
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Can We Turn Stem Cells Into Eggs?
Northwestern University biologist Jonathan Tilly is certain he’s found egg-making stem cells in adult mice. If he’s right, it would refute decades-old work that showed female mammals finish making all their eggs before or shortly after birth. This might make it possible to grow new eggs inside the ovaries of older women.
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The Last-Ditch Fertilization Method For Infertile Men Just Got More Reliable
For the past 25 years, men whose sperm can’t manage the arduous swim across a Petri dish have had the option of injecting a single sperm cell directly into an egg. But that method still left some sterile men out in the cold.
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Bird Eggs Need Extra Sperm To Make Chicks
You know the story of mammalian fertilisation: millions of sperm enter the vagina, only one fertilises the egg, more than one messes up the embryo, yadda yadda yadda. Turns out that’s not the only way it can work.