Unexpectedly, a kind of protein that is usually linked with diseases in the brain may play a vital role in semen, helping shepherd genetic material into sperm cells, scientists at Columbia’s Zuckerman Institute report in the journal Molecular Cell.

These findings raise the possibility that these proteins, known as amyloids, may one day help improve gene-editing technologies such as CRISPR.

“This is wild biology,” said senior author on the paper Anthony Fitzpatrick, Ph.D., a principal investigator at Columbia’s Zuckerman Institute. “Amyloids are most often thought of as a hallmark of Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and other neurodegenerative diseases in the brain, but they also have functional roles throughout the body and keep turning up in unexpected places.”