Adults lack stem cells for making new eggs
Monday, April 29, 2013 - 18:20
in Biology & Nature
Mammalian females ovulate periodically over their reproductive lifetimes, placing significant demands on their ovaries for egg production. Whether mammals generate new eggs in adulthood using stem cells has been a source of scientific controversy. If true, these "germ-line stem cells" might allow novel treatments for infertility and other diseases. However, new research from Carnegie's Lei Lei and Allan Spradling demonstrates that adult mice do not use stem cells to produce new eggs. Their work is published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the week of April 29.