Do egg cell-secreted aspartic proteases promote gamete attachment? Considering that unfertilized egg cells will promote polytubey, additional pollen tubes carrying I hap2 i -sperm cells will enter the embryo sac and after sperm cell release, more I hap2 i -sperm cell pairs will attach to egg cells. Notably, [6] observed that sperm cells remained outside of the unfertilized egg cells at 30 hap, and unfused sperm cells were found detachable at 24 hap from egg cells of the I ecs1-1 ecs2-1 i mutant. This is the case for animal proteases located in cortical granules of oocytes ([4]) and for ECS1/2, which are stored in a cortical network at the chalazal pole of the egg cell before fertilization and secreted only upon successful sperm cell-egg cell fusion ([19]). [Extracted from the article]