Suppose your mentor wanted to create a hybrid sea urchin species to study whethe

Question

Suppose your mentor wanted to create a hybrid sea urchin species to study whether acutely introducing large-scale genetic diversity increases life span. To make the hybrid species, she decided to mix sperm from Arbacia luxila and eggs from Lytechinus variegatus in a very small petri dish in an in vitro fertilization assay with hopes to raise the progeny from this process. Since you're taking Developmental Biology, you know this will never work! Why won't this work? What could you suggest to improve on her assay to make the in vitro fertilization assay work?

Explanation / Answer

The assay will not work due to a process called inter-species fertilization and the hurdles it has

There are a variety of reasons proper fertilization or developement of the progeny will take place,

Namely mechanical barriers, pre zygotic barriers and post zygotic barriers, here the mechanical barriers (geographical barriers, gential difference) were overcome by the nature of the assay.

The next is the pre -zygotic barrier which requires each gamete sperm and ovum to possess an equal number of chromosomes which is different for both these organisms so fertilization will not take place

further more these organisms come from different genuses which would suggest completely different developmental pathways even if fertilization would be forced to occur.

The assay could be modified to include two organisms of the same genus but different species, like a similar experiment that produced hybrids crossing Echinus nuharis and E. acutus at the imperial college of london. This similarity in genus might be able to overcome the above mentioned barriers.

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