Bettina’s Fly Sperm Paper Published

Our paper on the mRNA content of fly sperm, a collaboration between FlyChip, Tim Karr and Steve Dorus, is published in Proc R Soc B today.  We make the interesting observation that mature fly sperm contain an mRNA repertoire and that at least some of these transcripts are transferred to the egg upon fertilisation.  Intriguingly, the major signature of the fly sperm mRNA population is a striking enrichment for mRNAs encoding ribosomal proteins and other translation functions: we find exactly the same enrichment in the mRNA purified from human sperm.  A mystery 🙂