{"id":339,"date":"2003-02-11T03:29:08","date_gmt":"2003-02-11T03:29:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/?p=339"},"modified":"2011-05-01T18:35:17","modified_gmt":"2011-05-01T23:35:17","slug":"sperm-seek-the-heat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/?p=339","title":{"rendered":"sperm seek the heat"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Sperm cells act like heat-seeking missiles when it  comes to locating an unfertilized egg, according to a paper published  in the February <em>Nature Medicine.<\/em> The egg tends to lie in a spot around 2  degrees Celsius warmer than the place where sperm begin their final  journey through the female genital tract. Sperm can sense this  temperature difference and use it to navigate their way, reports Michael  Eisenbach of the Weizmann Institute in Israel. Once in the correct  vicinity, the sperm are able to follow chemical attractants released by  the egg. Eisenbach tested rabbit and human sperm in a chamber built to  simulate a fallopian&#8217;s tube temperature gradient, and some of the sperm  exhibited a clear preference for swimming toward the warmer area.  Eisenbach&#8217;s experiments also indicated that only the small percentage of  sperm that are fully mature &#8212; the ones most likely to actually  penetrate the egg &#8212; can sense both the temperature gradient and the  chemical signals needed to reach the egg. <\/span><\/p>\n<h6><em>This news brief appeared in the Random Data column of the <\/em>Boston Globe&#8217;s<em> Health\/Science section on 2\/11\/2003.<\/em><\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sperm cells act like heat-seeking missiles when it comes to locating an unfertilized egg, according to a paper published in the February Nature Medicine. The egg tends to lie in a spot around 2 degrees Celsius warmer than the place &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/?p=339\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-boston-globe-3","category-news-briefs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=339"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1238,"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339\/revisions\/1238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}