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Reaction of Starfish Spermatozoa to Histidine and Certain Other Substances considered in Relation to Zinc

Nature volume 176, pages 1068–1069 (1955)Cite this article

Abstract

STARFISH spermatozoa are generally immobile in sea-water suspension. However, Metz1 has reported that they become intensely active when they are suspended in egg albumin–sea water. His experiments were chiefly concerned with the agglutination reaction, and further it was shown (Metz and Donovan2) that most of the amino-acids and peptides were also capable of agglutinating the sperm, when fertilizin was added. Apart from the problem of agglutination, we were interested in the induced motility of these spermatozoa in albumin – sea water, and have examined the effects of various amino-acids on their motility and metabolism.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Zoological Institute, Faculty of Science, University of Tokyo,

    T. FUJII, S. UTIDA & T. MIZUNO

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  1. T. FUJII
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  2. S. UTIDA
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  3. T. MIZUNO
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FUJII, T., UTIDA, S. & MIZUNO, T. Reaction of Starfish Spermatozoa to Histidine and Certain Other Substances considered in Relation to Zinc. Nature 176, 1068–1069 (1955). https://doi.org/10.1038/1761068b0

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