Infertility affects more people than you might have
expected.
After a year of timing menstrual cycles, taking steps to boost
sperm quality and count, and countless doctor’s visits, about 15 percent
of couples still aren’t able to get pregnant. There are treatments, but
those don’t always work either, and they sometimes end in multiple
pregnancies.
A new treatment for infertility may be on the horizon,
however, as researchers from the University of Cambridge were able to
use stem cells to develop primordial germ cells (PGC), which can
eventually develop into either egg or sperm.
“Germ cells are ‘immortal’ in the sense that they provide
an enduring link between all generations, carrying genetic information
from one generation to the next,” said Dr. Azim Surani, a professor of
physiology and reproduction at the university, in a press release.
Primordial germ cells
are some of the first cells to be developed when an egg cell is
fertilized by a sperm.
As the egg divides into a cluster of cells called
a blastocyst, some cells remain inside so they can eventually develop
into the fetus while others on the outside become the placenta.
While
most of the inner cells become stem cells, capable of turning into any
kind of specialized cell, a small number of them become PGCs, which hold
genetic information that will one day be passed down as sperm or egg.
Using human embryonic stem cells and even skin cells, the
researchers were able to create these PGCs.
But in their research they
also discovered something they hadn’t found in mouse studies, for which
they had already done these experiments: Humans had a unique gene,
called SOX17, that was responsible for determining whether a PGC turned
into a sperm or egg cell. CONTINUE READING
MEDICALDAILY
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