Telling Tails

Building a new cell – or a new life – requires patterns of genes and proteins to work together. A mutation to a single gene can have a massive impact on this team effort. Compared to the healthy sperm on the left, those on the right – donated by two brothers with the same genetic mutation – haven’t formed correctly. Researchers find their mutation changes a single amino acid – one of thousands that make a protein called CEP128. This ‘tiny’ change has big knock-on effects – CEP128 usually helps to form the centrosome – a sort of molecular compass that cells use to guide development. Faulty CEP128 leads to developmental problems with sperm’s tail-like flagella. Investigating further in mice, the team reveal disrupting the balance of healthy CEP128 – having too little or even too much – snarls up the working of spermatogenesis which in turn leads to infertility, making centrosome proteins an interesting target for future treatments.

Written by John Ankers

John Ankers

Writer

A former researcher in systems biology, John is now an online biology tutor and professional coach supporting the wellbeing of scientists and NHS professionals. He's writing, too, of course.

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• Image adapted from work by Xueguang Zhang, Lingbo Wang, Yongyi Ma, Yan Wang, Hongqian Liu, Mohan Liu and Lang Qin, and colleagues
• Fudan University, Shanghai and Sichuan University, Chengdu, China
• Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
• Published in Nature Communications, March 2022