Prologue

Abstract

Recent advances in the field of gamete interactions have produced new understandings of the mechanisms of cell-cell interactions at the molecular and supramolecular levels. This new knowledge, of course, brings pleasure and satisfaction to those of us who are fulfilling our own sense of curiosity and wonder about this fundamental biological process, but it also has significance for mankind. Man’s ability to control the fertilization process will allow us to obtain fertilization where it is desired, but not “naturally” obtainable, or to prevent fertility when it is not desired. Also, it will allow us to increase fertility where it is inadequate or limiting as in food producing animals, and with the advent of in vitro fertilization in mammals, including humans, we have the potential to produce and manipulate embryos, and to alter the embryonic genome — events which, to a certain extent, are already happening.