POSTER PRESENTATION Open Access Single cell neuro-sensory dynamics: Ca2+ chemoreceptor-guided sea urchin sperm motility

Neuro-sensory systems are critical for integrating environ-mental stimuli and providing a framework for resolving decision-making tasks. Remarkably, the molecular mechan-isms mediating transduction of sensory information in neu-rons are also found in other cellular tissues, including sperm. One mechanism facilitating such behavior is a sperm’s ability to perform chemotaxis to egg-derived com-pounds, a phenomenon in which sperm orient to an attrac-tant gradient around an egg. The ensuing motility of the sperm cell is driven by attractants binding to olfactory G-coupled receptor proteins- located on the cell mem-brane surface- that elicits a signal transduction cascad