This is how life begins ... strange ripples sweep eggs upon division

Little West

"Ripples forming small hurricane circles are circled on its surface," researchers describe in a new study the moments when a fertilized egg begins the process of division to create life.

In almost all species, when an egg is fertilized, a series of ripples is spread over its surface by billions of inactive proteins, up to that point, as it takes its place on the cell membrane, as if it were a signal for the egg to start dividing.

Ripples are necessary for cell division
In the new study, published in the journal Nature Physics last March 23, a team of MIT researchers examined these cell waves on the starfish egg that are similar to the eggs of many other animal species, highlighting the ripples that apply On cell membranes before dividing.

Previous studies have shown that the "Rho-GTP" protein, which is located inside the egg in large numbers, plays a pivotal role during fertilization of the egg. Once inoculated, all stick to the egg membrane and create a series of ripples.

"These protein waves are used in particular to direct the division around the cell nucleus," according to Nikita Fakhry, a biophysics researcher and supervisor of the research team.

An egg is a huge cell, and these proteins must work together to find their center, so that the cell “determines” the location of division to form a living organism. Without these wave-forming proteins, there would be no cell division.

To better understand the role of the "Rho-GTP" protein and the wave pattern it causes, the team worked on ten eggs of a starfish, changing the concentration of the hormone responsible for stimulating fertilization and promoting cell maturity, and adding fluorescent substances that were able to bind to this type of protein to track its movement.

The researchers collected videos of each egg clearly showing wave movement on the surface. They notice that the brighter the area, the more Rho-GTP proteins are concentrated, then compare the videos with brightness, to create animations that reproduce the observed wave pattern.

Small hurricanes
The team of scientists observed that the produced waves seemed to spread in a spiral shape like the small hurricanes that collide with each other, and a number of them disappeared and the rest continue to rotate, in a scene reminiscent of the behavior of other very diverse systems in a completely different range, such as vortices that occur in the atmosphere and the oceans.

To understand these ripples and their movement, the researchers focused on the center of each spiral shape that causes "topographic defects" on the cell membrane due to the interference of waves caused by the activation of proteins. Statistical analysis enabled the researchers to determine the speed and frequency of these defects on the surface of the egg, as well as the circumstances in which spiral shapes appeared and then faded away.

The researchers say the results are exactly the same as the phenomena occurring on a large scale "When you look at the movement of these (ripples), you find them similar to vortices in liquids, or waves in the brain, it is the global phenomenon itself, which is simply reduced to the level of the cell," explains Jorn. Dunkel, co-author of the study.

Promising applications
The authors of the study believe that taking surface waves on the fertilized egg cells of a dominant cosmic pattern will allow the application of these results to several techniques that have been developed to study similar patterns in the aforementioned systems, and thus to learn more about the living world.

In particular, the researchers emphasize the similarities between these cellular waves and the principle of quantum computing. On the surface of the egg, the waves send specific signals to direct the cell toward division. In quantum computing, it is about treating quantum states in a fluid, according to an accurate scheme, with the goal of data processing and calculations.

This comparison opens the way for the development of small-scale computers from biological cells, in other words, perhaps these biological signal waves can be used as a computational tool, says Fakhri.