Long live the ovary: Mutant mice keep eggs

摘要

It's among the most wasteful phenome-na in the human body. A female starts her life with millions of immature eggs, or oocytes, in her ovaries. Yet over the years, most of those cells commit suicide, eventually leaving the ovaries barren. A similar squandering occurs in many mammals, but researchers have now found that a gene mutation can thwart this process in female mice. When they lack normal copies of the gene called BAX, aged rodents—the equivalent of women 100 to 120 years old—retain the egg-filled ovaries of a young mouse.