'Cellular Memory' of DNA Damage in Oocyte Quality Control (IMAGE)
Caption
Females are born with a finite number of eggs that are steadily depleted throughout their lifetime. This reserve of eggs is selected from a much larger pool of millions of precursor cells, or oocytes, that form during fetal life. So there is a substantial amount of quality control during the process of forming an egg cell, or ovum, that weeds out all but the highest quality cells. New research from Neil Hunter's laboratory at UC Davis reveals that this quality control works by "remembering" previous DNA damage to the cell. In this image, ovaries of mice lacking the rnf212 gene (lower panels) had more oocytes than wild type mice (upper panels). Rnf212 seems to act as a quality check that tags flawed oocytes for destruction.
Credit
Huanyu Qiao and Neil Hunter, UC Davis
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