musingsonwomenshealth.com

Reflections on 40 years as a doctor in Women's Health

Hold, enough!


All is supposed to be fair in love and war, I’ve heard, but I thought that was just a joke. Surely I wouldn’t be allowed to poison the people who actually managed to date the girls I was interested in when I was young enough to care; poisoning an entire football team would probably have been noticed. And anyway, even in their absence, there was still the basketball team. So, short of a pandemic (whoops!), there wouldn’t be an available go-to…

Let me explain. In my ever peripatetic travels through my apps, I am sometimes delayed by provocative titles. Often they prove to be merely click-bait, and I have to struggle to extricate myself from the rabbit holes. Occasionally, however, I am content to remain trapped. I mean, who could walk past an article from the stately Smithsonian Magazine that promised an exposé on mice sperm? The title of the article was clearly a teaser: Mice Sperm Sabotage Other Swimmers With Poison. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/some-sperm-sabotage-other-swimmers-poison-180976976

Its writer, Theresa Machemer, didn’t waste much time dragging the reader into the salacious waters of her article. ‘A study in mice found that poison-spewing sperm make others swim in circles, but carry the antidote for themselves.’

In fact, unfair as that may seem at first, it raises at least two big questions: why and how? I mean, who would give a subset of sperm the right to bear arms? And are they receiving other benefits that the rank and file were never offered in their contracts?

The how, of course, involves the usual genetic panjandrum: it’s ‘a genetic variation in mouse sperm, called the “t-type”… These t-type sperm are able to spread a protein called RAC1 that essentially poisons other sperm. T-type sperm plant the seeds of destruction early in their development, then fortify themselves against RAC-1.’ And then, alas (depending on which side you support), ‘When it comes time to race for the egg, the t-type sperm can swim in a straight line while poisoned sperm swim in hapless circles until they die.’

But it’s not quite that simple, naturally: ‘the level of this protein… can be more or less active, depending on whether the sperm have the gene to make it, and whether that gene is flipped on like a light switch, says biologist Alexandra Amaral of the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics.’ It reminds me of Goldilocks tasting the porridge of the three bears. ‘The level of protein that is on has to be quite well regulated. If it is too much, sperm don’t move well. And if it’s too low, it also doesn’t move well…’ It has to be just right.

‘If all of the sperm in a group are t-type, and they’re all making RAC1, they will all struggle because there is so much of the poisonous protein going around… On the other hand, if there are no t-type sperm present, then all the other sperm remain relatively healthy and swim well… The trick is that the t-haplotype poisons all sperm, but at the same time produces an antidote, which acts only in t-sperm and protects them.’

It’s still unclear to me whether the RAC-1 protein has the potential for going rogue, though, so who knows what would happen if it ever escaped? In the wrong testicles it could shift the always delicate balance of power. It has already been found wandering around bull’s sperm, wouldn’t you know, but I haven’t heard yet whether it has resulted in a master-race of bulls or anything. Still, a bull apparently has sperm more similar to human sperm than a mouse… I mean who would ever check that kind of thing?

So, do we humans have anything to worry about? Could some malevolent sperm-worshippers sneak it into carefully selected bagels or cinnamon buns? Are there RAC-1 cabals secretly kitting out human sperm-genes already? Perhaps it’s a bit too early to say, but I suspect it wouldn’t be difficult to slip it into one of the many conspiracy theories currently in circulation. I’ve already ‘unfollowed’ (or is it unfriended? I always get them mixed up) almost everybody I know on my Facebook account, however, so I’m not sure what that does to my ability to remain au fait with recent trends.

I suspect I’m missing out on a lot of gossip, not to mention any pertinent RAC-1 developments, but I did bring it up in a socially-distanced meeting with Brien on his porch. He’s usually distracted by Sheda, his favourite yard-tree, but the wind was down, and she doesn’t wave at him much without it. Even Brien loses interest in a still branch.

“So, what’s new, G?” he said, handing me a can of beer after I managed to negotiate the strategically placed burdock plants on his uncut lawn to reach the porch.

I told him about the mouse sperm article and he rolled his eyes. “The potential for abuse worries me,” I added, a little annoyed at his reaction.

“At our age, even evil sperms are just a memory,” he said, after opening another can for himself. “And besides, if push ever came to shove, the good ones would just develop an antidote like the T-guys did,” he added after thinking about it for a moment. “It’s how Nature works, eh?”

I had a sip of my beer and sighed. “But why complicate a simple thing like sperm racing to an egg and fertilizing it? Why not just make the sperm carrying the best instructions faster swimmers -better competitors? You don’t really need to talk to the ones you’re racing with.”

Brien is very good at sending his eyes on missions to my face and I never know what to do with them if they perch there too long. His lips slowly curled into a knowing smile before he had a long pull on his beer. “Who cares how sperms think, G, but suppose one of them decided to snitch to the egg about the battle plans… Now there’s a real problem! No more glass ceilings, eh?” He managed a silent burp and put the empty can down on the porch beside his chair. “We‘d probably never know about it, though -we’re usually making too much noise at the time to hear anything.”

How do you reply to something like that? I shooed his eyes away and glanced at Sheda again, but for some reason I felt reassured…

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gozzter

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