MAIA; Fc receptor-like 3; supersedes JUNO as IZUMO1 receptor during human fertilization

• Authors: VONDRAKOVA Jana; FROLIKOVA Michaela; DED Lukas; CERNY Jiri; POSTLEROVA Pavla; PALENIKOVA Veronika; SIMONIK Ondrej; NAHACKA Zuzana; BASUS Krystof; VALASKOVA Eliska; MACHAN Radek; PACEY Allan; HOLUBCOVÁ Zuzana; KOUBEK Pavel; EZROVA Zuzana; PARK Soojin; LIU Ruiwu; PARTHA Raghavendran; CLARK Nathan; NEUZIL Jiri; IKAWA Masahito; ERICKSON Kent; LAM Kit S.; MOORE Harry; KOMRSKOVA Katerina
• Year of publication: 2022
• Type: Article in Periodical
• Magazine / Source: Science advances
• MU Faculty or unit: Faculty of Medicine
• Web: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abn0047
• Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abn0047
• Keywords: human fertilization; MAIA; Fc receptor-like 3; supersedes JUNO; IZUMO1
• Description: Gamete fusion is a critical event of mammalian fertilization. A random one-bead one-compound combinatorial peptide library represented synthetic human egg mimics and identified a previously unidentified ligand as Fc receptor-like 3, named MAIA after the mythological goddess intertwined with JUNO. This immunoglobulin super family receptor was expressed on human oolemma and played a major role during sperm-egg adhesion and fusion. MAIA forms a highly stable interaction with the known IZUMO1/JUNO sperm-egg complex, permitting specific gamete fusion. The complexity of the MAIA isotype may offer a cryptic sexual selection mechanism to avoid genetic incompatibility and achieve favorable fitness outcomes.

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