Aged mouse ovaries possess rare premeiotic germ cells that can generate oocytes following transplantation into a young host environment.

ABSTRACT: Of all the major organ systems in the body, the ovaries of females are the first to exhibit impaired function with advancing age. Until recently, traditional thinking was that female mammals are provided with a non-renewable pool of oocyte-containing follicles at birth that are depleted during postnatal life to exhaustion, driving ovarian failure. However, a growing body of evidence, including the isolation of germline stem cells (GSC) from adult mouse ovaries that produce developmentally-competent oocytes, has challenged this belief. In addition, rare germline stem-like cells capable of generating oocytes in vitro that undergo parthenogenesis to form blastocyst-like structures have recently been identified in postmenopausal human ovaries. Here we show that the germline-specific meiosis-co

SUBMITTER: Niikura Y 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2815754 | biostudies-literature | 2009 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature