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Sperm gene same as it was 600 million years ago, miraculously still in fashion
We've had a thing for sperm ever since Look Who's Talking broadened our appreciation for the reproductive arts, and now scientists at Northwestern's Feinberg School of Medicine have discovered a wealth of new information about the world's most adored swimmers. Believe it or not, we're now left thinking that they're even more hardcore. Yes, they've been rocking the exact same makeup -- called the Boule gene -- since the dawn of evolution. But as it turns out, that gene is also shared across a huge swath of organisms from humans to fish to fruit flies, and it's only ever used in sperm. This bodes interestingly for the future of reproductive sciences; researchers removed the Boule gene from mice and found that, while otherwise completely normal, they didn't produce sperm. We can almost feel that Gucci case for the male contraceptive pill in our man-purses now. [Photo courtesy of aSIMULAtor]
