A February study indicates that a deficient protein could be the cause of infertility in women.
This was found after a European research team did research into why human eggs sometimes carry the wrong number of chromosomes.
The Chromosome Problem
It has been long noted that human eggs can have the wrong number of chromosomes and that leads to both infertility and miscarriages.
Melina Schuh at the Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Multidisciplinary Sciences believes the chromosome problem is caused by a missing protein called KIFC1.
This protein is a type of molecular motor that stabilizes functions that separates chromosomes and they occur in cell division.
The research team used unfertilized, immature eggs donated by German and UK patients in the research.
They compared them to eggs from animals like pigs, cattle and mice.
The protein forms connections between spindle fibers.
This keeps the fibers from falling apart, amounting to a successful pregnancy.
What’s Next?
Doctors and researchers hope these new discoveries will create new therapeutic approaches for women to
reduce chromosome errors in their eggs.
That will allow for a better rate of successful pregnancies both naturally and in medically-assisted pregnancy procedures.
Researchers have already started working on the theory of introducing KIFC1 into human eggs to reduce
chromosome separation errors.
The big question, according to doctors, is will the introduction of the protein stabilize the spindles in the eggs.
So far, so good. Researchers said looking at human eggs under a microscope shows spindles that are more stable and fewer chromosome segregation errors.
This gives researchers hope that they could develop a treatment to reduce the amount of defective eggs for women in fertility treatments.
Negative Testing
Scientists also tested protein manipulation levels in mice and cows using a new method called Trim-Away.
The idea was to lessen the amount of the protein by degrading a number of target proteins in cells.
The result was more unstable spindles and more chromosome segregation errors occurring.
