Suppose your mentor wanted to create a hybrid sea urchin species to study whethe

Question

Suppose your mentor wanted to create a hybrid sea urchin species to study whether acutely introducing large-scale genetic diversity increases life span. To make the hybrid species, she decided to mix sperm from Arbacia luxila and eggs from Lytechinus variegatus in a very small petri dish in an in vitro fertilization assay with hopes to raise the progeny from this process. Since you're taking Developmental Biology, you know this will never work! Why won't this work? What could you suggest to improve on her assay to make the in vitro fertilization assay work?

Explanation / Answer

In sea urchins fertilisation takes place in the external environment. The sperms of sea urchins contain bindin proteins and the ova contain bindin receptors. The bindin on sperms and bindin receptors in ova are species specific. So, sperm and ova from same species only fertilise and develop into embryo. Therefore, if gametes of two sea urchins species are placed together, they will not fertilise.

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