:: Running from the Thought Police ::

:: Thursday, March 11, 2004 ::

Everything You've Been Taught Is Wrong

About female reproduction, that is.

Tilly and his colleagues measured the number of healthy and dying eggs in juvenile and adult mice. Initially, they found the eggs died at a low but steady rate.

However, once the female mice reached early adulthood, the number of dying eggs accelerated to about one-third of the estimated 3,000 or so total follicles in each ovary, and the ovaries flushed out the dead eggs every few days.

At that pace, the researchers expected to see the animals' oocytes depleted in a matter of days or weeks. Yet past work had shown that female mice remain fertile through at least one year of age.

The researchers found that as older eggs die off in juvenile and adult mice, the germ stem cells in the ovaries apparently generate new eggs -- a process that had been thought to occur only as female mammals developed in the womb.

"That's when it really struck us that the dogma must be wrong. That sort of set off the bells and whistles," Tilly said.

:: The Squire 11:03 AM :: email this post :: ::
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