Forget about the birds and the bees. If you really want to learn how babies are made, you need to know about Juno and Izumo.
Fertilization takes place when an egg cell and a sperm cell recognize one another and fuse to form an embryo. But how they recognize each other had remained a mystery.
Researchers said Wednesday that they have identified a protein on the egg cell's surface that interacts with another protein on the surface of the sperm cell, allowing the two cells to join.