A Mechanism to Explain Age-Related Loss in Female Fertility

Here, researchers identify a form of cellular damage that appears to be a proximate cause of the loss of female fertility with advancing age. But what causes this damage? Tying their observations to other, earlier forms of damage and dysfunction in aged tissues will no doubt be a great deal of work if pursued through purely investigative methods. The fastest approach to such a situation tends to be to fix the damage and see what happens as a result, but the lack of readily available repair therapies has hampered this approach in the past. Now that the first of these treatments are emerging, such as senescent cell clearance, we will start to see something of a renaissance in determining cause and effect throughout the processes of aging. Researchers have discovered a possible new explanation for female infertility. Thanks to cutting-edge microscopy techniques, they observed for the first time a specific defect in the eggs of older mice. This defect may also be found in the eggs of older women. The choreography of cell division goes awry, and causes errors in the sharing of chromosomes. "We found that the microtubules that orchestrate chromosome segregation during cell division behave abnormally in older eggs. Instead of assembling a spindle in a controlled symmetrical fashion, the microtubules go in all directions. The altered movement of the microtubules apparently contributes to errors in chromosome segregation, and so represents a new explanation for age-related i...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs