Maintaining Genetic and ChromosomalStability in the Mammalian Germline

将遗传信息从父母传递给孩子的卵子和精子细胞会经历一种叫做减数分裂的特殊细胞分裂形式。减数分裂使发育中的卵子和精子中的染色体数量减半，但减数分裂过程中的错误可能导致胚胎继承错误数量的染色体。这可能会导致遗传疾病和流产，并且是人类一些常见遗传疾病（如唐氏综合症）的基础。虽然我们知道人类减数分裂错误的一些风险因素，但我们并不完全了解像母亲年龄这样的风险因素是如何影响减数分裂染色体的，或者像减数分裂中染色体交换数量这样的风险因素是如何正常调节的。我们之前已经在老鼠身上发现了新的途径，可以防止一些减数分裂错误发生在发育中的卵子和精子中。该项目的目的是更好地了解这些途径如何影响小鼠减数分裂中的染色体行为。我们将使用培养细胞系和转基因小鼠的组合来研究哪些染色体相关分子受这些途径的调节，并研究我们是否可以操纵这些途径来减少或防止在发育中的卵子和精子中出现染色体异常。我们希望通过理解和操纵小鼠的这些途径，我们将更多地了解如何在未来能够防止人类出现染色体异常。

The egg and sperm cells that pass genetic information from parents to their children go through a specialised form of cell division called meiosis. Meiosis halves the number of chromosomes in the developing eggs and sperm, but mistakes during meiosis can result in embryos inheriting the wrong number of chromosomes. This can cause genetic disease and miscarriage, and is the basis of some common inherited conditions in humans such as Down Syndrome. Although we know some of the risk factors for these meiotic errors in humans, we don’t fully understand how risk factors like maternal age affects meiotic chromosomes, or how risk factors like the number of chromosomal exchanges in meiosis are normally regulated. We have previously identified new pathways operating in mice that prevent some of these meiotic mistakes from occurring in the developing eggs and sperm. The aim of this programme is to better understand how these pathways affect chromosome behaviour in meiosis in mice. We will use a combination of cultured cell lines and genetically modified mice to investigate which chromosome-associated molecules are regulated by these pathways, and to investigate if we can manipulate these pathways to reduce or prevent chromosomal abnormalities from arising in developing eggs and sperm. We hope that by understanding and manipulating these pathways in mice, we will learn more about how we might, in the future, be able to prevent chromosomal abnormalities from arising in humans.