Sparks literally fly when a sperm and an egg hit it off. The fertilized mammalian egg releases from its surface billions of zinc atoms in "zinc sparks," one wave after another, a Northwestern University-led interdisciplinary research team has found. Researchers at Northwestern developed technology that captured images of these fireworks.  According to Dr. Teresa Woodruff, PhD part of the team studying this phenomenon and director of the Women's Health Research Institute at NU, "The amount of zinc released by an egg could be a great marker for  identifying a high-quality fertilized egg, something we haven't been able to do.  Once we can, fewer embryos would need to be transferred during fertility treatments."

View a WGN-TV segment on the new discovery HERE.

The study is publishing in the Dec. 15 by the journal Nature Chemistry.

Read more and view pictures HERE.