Watch The Moment An Egg Becomes An Embryo

A new study shows a zinc outburst occurs when an egg meets sperm.

What actually happens to tip an egg over from just hanging out, doing eggy things, to being an embryo?

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If your knowledge extends to knowing that some sex ed terms like "embryo" and "zygote" make great Scrabble words, read on.

New research has captured the moment when an egg meets sperm in a mouse.

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You're looking at the moment of fertilization! In a study published in Nature Chemistry, a team found that thousands of pouches filled with around a million zinc atoms each erupt under a mouse egg's surface, signifying the official change from egg to embryo.

The green shown above is the egg's surface, and the zinc sparks are yellow.

Getting a better grasp of how zinc fluxes affect cells can be helpful in selecting the best eggs for in vitro fertilization, according to Science News.

Watch the sparks fly below.

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h/t Science News