Sea Anemone Study Reveals New Insights into Human Fertility and Meiosis
- Researchers at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research published a study in Science Advances on October 23, 2026, revealing that the sea anemone Nematostella vectensis carries eight of...
- The study found that the sea anemone builds a ladder-like structure known as the synaptonemal complex between paired chromosomes, mirroring the process in humans.
- "That was one of the broader insights from the paper," said Stowers Investigator and Graduate School President Matt Gibson, Ph.D.
Researchers at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research published a study in Science Advances on October 23, 2026, revealing that the sea anemone Nematostella vectensis carries eight of the ten proteins humans use to pair and align meiotic chromosomes. The findings offer a new model for studying meiosis, the tightly choreographed cell division process essential for creating egg and sperm cells. When meiosis fails in humans, it can lead to infertility, miscarriage, and birth defects.
Stowers Institute Study Reveals Evolutionary Flexibility in Meiosis Proteins
The study found that the sea anemone builds a ladder-like structure known as the synaptonemal complex between paired chromosomes, mirroring the process in humans. However, when researchers tested the function of these proteins, the functional similarities began to break down. Stowers Investigator and Graduate School President Matt Gibson, Ph.D., noted that proteins and protein complexes can look structurally similar while functioning in entirely different ways.
“That was one of the broader insights from the paper,” said Stowers Investigator and Graduate School President Matt Gibson, Ph.D. “Proteins and protein complexes may look very much the same, but nevertheless function in different ways.”
Stefanie “Steffi” Williams, Ph.D., a Stowers Graduate School alumna and current postdoctoral fellow at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory, led the project. The work originated from a collaboration between Gibson’s laboratory and the lab of the late R. Scott Hawley, Ph.D., a former Stowers Investigator and pioneer in the field of meiosis. Williams observed that many proteins coordinating meiosis display signatures of rapid evolution, changing much faster than standard housekeeping genes.
Genetic Mutations Cause Female Sterility in Nematostella vectensis
To test the protein functions, Williams disabled three specific proteins in the sea anemone. Mutations in sycp1 and syce2 resulted in female sterility, while male sea anemones carrying identical mutations remained fertile. Furthermore, the loss of syce2 disrupted the stabilization of paired chromosomes exclusively in females.
“When I first sat at the microscope and saw that some components are not required to synapse chromosomes, I thought I must have made a mistake because it didn’t make any sense,” said Williams. “Finding out that the architectural functions of synaptonemal complex proteins must have changed was totally unexpected.”
Until this study, functional research on these meiotic proteins was largely confined to mice, fruit flies, and roundworms. Because Nematostella is transparent and features eight gonads that can be observed directly in live specimens, it provides a unique experimental platform. This transparency allows scientists to watch meiosis unfold in living tissue, opening new avenues for observing chromosome behavior that remain difficult to study in mammals.