You might think flowers don't have much choice about who they mate with, given they are rooted to the ground and can't move. But when scientists from Nagoya, Japan used powerful microscopes to study ...

In flowering plants, the transition from cross-fertilization (outcrossing) to self-fertilization has evolved repeatedly across species. This shift is often accompanied by a well-known set of traits ...

The development of every animal in the history of the world began with a simple step: the fusion of a spermatozoon (the male gamete) with an oocyte, or egg (the female gamete). Despite the ubiquity of ...

During mammalian reproduction, millions of sperm undertake a journey that only one will finish. This journey to fertilization has been commonly viewed as a race: a sea of sperm competing to get to the ...

The process of oocyte maturation and subsequent fertilization involves a coordinated series of cellular and molecular events that prepare the egg for successful monospermic union and embryogenesis.

In vitro fertilization (IVF) in mammals encompasses a series of coordinated steps that replicate the natural union of gametes outside the body. Following ovarian stimulation and oocyte retrieval, ...

OK, it takes two for human reproduction, and now it seems that plants and animals that can rely on either a partner or go alone by self-fertilization give their offspring a better chance for longer ...