Fertilization on the screen
A scientifically reliable film about the fertilization of an egg was made based on "Star Wars"
Ksenia Malysheva, Naked Science
Two biologists made a realistic short film about how a sperm fertilizes an egg. Scientists wanted to tell children about science, but along the way they figured out the molecular dynamics of the sperm.
Don Ingber and Charles Reilly, microbiologists from the Wyss Institute of Biotechnology (Harvard), performed in unusual roles for themselves as a director, screenwriter and even a cameraman. The result was a short film "The Beginning" (The Beginning). The plot is as old as sexual reproduction: the journey of spermatozoa to the egg, penetration inside and the first division.
With the credits and music, the film resembles the Star Wars saga, but is much more realistic; to date, this is the most realistic reconstruction of the fertilization process. Moreover, in the process of shooting (or rather, computer modeling), a scientific discovery was made: scientists understood how energy is distributed during the movement of the sperm. The program in which the film was created turned out to be a successful tool for modeling multi-level processes.
Ingber and Reilly combined software that animators use to simulate mechanical motion and tools for simulating molecular dynamic processes. The result is a model that takes into account the movement inside the axonemes (protein complexes that make up the flagellum of the sperm), and even the lowest levels of motion control – the work of molecular motors-dyneins that set cellular structures in motion.
In the process of modeling, scientists described a cascade of reactions starting with ATP hydrolysis, which leads to the advancement of dyneins along the cytoskeleton microtubules; the result of this movement is the beating of the sperm flagellum, which allows it to move along the female genital tract.
A detailed description of the film is published in the ACS Nano magazine (much shorter and clearer and, most importantly, in the open access – in the article Art advancing science at the nanoscale on the Wyss Institute – VM website).
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