Congratulations to Dr. Katherine Maniates for her K99 NIH Pathway to Independence Award for her work entitled, "Role of PGM-3 and SPE-56 in fertilization and egg activation".
Infertility impacts one in five couples globally. For many of these couples, the sperm and egg look completely normal. This complicates determining treatments for infertility. Dr. Maniates' work focuses on discovering and characterizing the genes that are required for fertilization to occur. In particular, this work focuses on identifying genes expressed on the egg’s surface since we know many fewer genes expressed on the surface of the egg compared with the sperm.
The funding from this grant will help Dr. Maniates continue the search for egg fertilization genes as determine the role that glycosylation has on the egg surface during fertilization. In addition, this grant will provide support for her future independent research career to help Dr. Maniates establish her own research lab.
A special thanks to the Singson Lab, Waksman Institute of Microbiology, Department of Genetics and the INSPIRE Postdoctoral Research and Education Program, Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. 
Katherine Maniates, Ph.D., Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Rutgers University,
