A new study published in Science Alert and what the digital picks up ‘20 minutes‘reveals that “the brain and testes have the highest amount of common proteins, compared to other tissues in the human body.”
This has been demonstrated in an article by a team led by the biomedical scientist Bárbara Matos from the University of Aveiro, in Portugal.
The brain controls our bodies, receives and interprets signals from the sensory organs, and manages all of our thoughts and feelings. Human testes, meanwhile, have only two main functions: the production of sperm and hormones.
Other studies had suggested that there were links between sexual dysfunction and brain disorders, and even between intelligence and semen quality. Now the team of researchers from Portugal and the UK have found an explanation for why they might exist.
They compared proteins in 33 types of tissues, including the heart, intestine, cervix, ovaries and placenta, and found that the testicles and the brain share 13,442 proteins in common.
By taking a closer look at the shared proteins most expressed in these tissues, Matos and his colleagues found that they are primarily involved in tissue development and cell communication.
The brain and testicles crave energy to fuel highly demanding processes such as thinking and the production of several million tiny sperm cells per day. Therefore, both organs have specialized cells to support the hard-working neurons in the brain and germ cells in the testicles to keep them well-nourished and physically comfortable.
Furthermore, despite being cells with very different purposes, neurons function similarly to sperm in several ways. Both cells have important tasks that involve moving things from their inside to their outside environment, a process called exocytosis.
This is how brain cells transmit neurotransmitters to each other. In sperm, the same process is used to release important fertilization factors.
These findings raise many questions, the obvious one is how two such disparate organs ended up sharing so much in common. The researchers suspect that it is because both are strongly influenced by the speciation process.
Just as animals separated by millions of years of evolution and evolved half a world away from each other can develop the same traits, they can also develop different groups of tissues within the human body.
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