Definition
Fertilization in Mammals
The essence of life is the ability to reproduce and perpetuate the species. Fertilization or sexual reproduction is defined as the union of two germ cells, egg (female) and sperm (male), whereby the somatic chromosome number is restored and the resulting offspring exhibit characteristics of their parents (1). Male and female gametes fuse and recombine inherited traits of the two parents to produce individuals with novel assortments of genes. Sexual reproduction, as opposed to asexual reproduction, a process that gives rise to offspring genetically identical to the parent organism, has great advantages. Consequently, a vast majority of plants and animals have adopted it.
Fertilization refers specifically to fusion of male and female gametes to form a zygote. However, the overall pathway to fertilization encompasses a host of events that precede gamete fusion. Among these, extensive transcription and translation, architectural rearrangements and...
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© 2006 Springer-Verlag
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Litscher, E.S., Wassarman, P.M. (2006). Mammalian Fertilization. In: Encyclopedic Reference of Genomics and Proteomics in Molecular Medicine. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg . https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-29623-9_3270
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-29623-9_3270
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