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. 2020 Mar 24;10:5335. doi: 10.1038/s41598-020-62091-y

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© The Author(s) 2020

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

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Hypothetical model of mammalian gamete adhesion/fusion. The illustration represents the adhesion/fusion proteins involved in fertilization in mice and humans. The essential ones: SPACA6 and IZUMO1 on the sperm membrane, JUNO receptor of IZUMO1, and CD9 on the oocyte membrane. A non-exhaustive list of some molecules participating but not essential to gamete interaction: ADAMs and integrins on sperm, integrins and tetraspanins on the oocyte. Those that remain to be discovered: the fusogen actor and certainly other ligands and receptors on both sides. We propose a model in which a direct or indirect interaction between SPACA6 and IZUMO1 within a molecular complex would be required to recruit the fusogenic actor.