We ran all known fertilization factors in zebrafish against 1,400 testis proteins with the help of @86dominik.bsky.social (2/11)

Together with Yonggang Lu in Masahito Ikawa’s group, we found that Tmem81 is essential for fertilization in zebrafish and mice (4/11)

In line with the AlphaFold prediction, we show that Tmem81, Izumo1, and Spaca6 interact in zebrafish sperm and that the human orthologs interact in vitro (5/11)

But what is this conserved sperm complex doing in fertilization? AlphaFold predicted the zebrafish trimer to interact with the egg factor Bouncer. Not only do we confirm this prediction, we find that complex formation is required for Bouncer binding! (6/11)

Excitingly, this contrasts with mammals, where IZUMO1 interacts with JUNO, a evolutionarily and structurally unrelated protein to Bouncer. Our work presents an intriguing model of a conserved complex bridging sperm and egg through divergent egg factors in vertebrates (7/11)

A big thank you to everyone who supported and contributed to this work! It was an amazing team effort spearheaded by @vdeneke.bsky.social & Andreas Blaha with key contributions from Yonggang Lu from Masahito Ikawa’s lab at Osaka University,… (8/11)

...further members of the @pauligroup.bsky.social (e.g. @johannessuwita.bsky.social, Karin Panser, @claraphan.bsky.social), Alex Schleiffer, @86dominik.bsky.social & our amazing proteomics facility @elisabethroitinger.bsky.social @impvienna.bsky.social @imbavienna.bsky.social, ... (9/11)

… as well as our external collaborators at the University of Toronto (Jeff Lee’s lab) and at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem (Joachim Surm @yehumoran.bsky.social)! (10/11)