Isolation and function of human oogenesis genes regulating meiosis, recruitment, growth and maturation of the oocyte.

随着体外受精(IVF)的发展，生殖医学发展非常迅速，为广大不孕不育夫妇提供了组建自己家庭的机会。因此，通过大手术和捐献精子进行人工授精治疗不孕不育的方法已经减少，使用试管受精来诊断高危家庭胚胎中的严重遗传病的兴趣越来越大。然而，人们对卵泡形成的潜在过程知之甚少，这些卵泡包含体外受精所需的发育中的生殖细胞和成熟的卵母细胞。可以从任何患者身上获取的卵母细胞队列依赖于未知的招募过程，启动静止生殖细胞子集的发育，并以一种不受控制的自发方式发生。本项目将从基础原始种群中确定与卵母细胞招募有关的已知和未知基因。这些基因将成为帮助不孕妇女、改善她们对生育药物的反应、开发新的避孕方法以及潜在地延长妇女生殖寿命的候选基因。了解在体内和体外成熟的卵母细胞中表达的基因将对使用体外受精药物而不是给患者进行体外受精的长期机会具有重要影响。这将极大地降低试管受精的成本以及过度刺激患者卵巢的副作用和相关的后遗症。该研究项目是一项发现计划，旨在识别控制人类卵子发生的基因。直到最近，才发展出足够灵敏的技术来检测单个生殖细胞和卵母细胞中由活性基因进行的少量RNA。

Reproductive medicine has progressed very rapidly with the development of in vitro fertilization (IVF) and has delivered the opportunity for a broad group of infertile couples to form their own families. As a consequence, treatment of infertility by major surgery and artificial insemination with donor sperm have declined and there is an increasing interest in the use of IVF to diagnose severe genetic disease in embryos of families at risk. However, little is known about the underlying processes that form the follicles containing the developing germ cells and the matured oocytes needed for IVF. The cohort of oocytes that can be harvested from any patient depends on unknown recruitment processes initiating development of a subset of the quiescent germ cells and happens in an unregulated and spontaneous manner. The present project will identify the known and unknown genes involved in recruitment of oocytes from the basal primordial population. These genes will become candidates for aiding infertile women, improving their response to fertility drugs, the development of novel contraceptive methods and potentially increasing the reproductive life span of women. Knowledge of the genes expressed in oocytes matured in vivo and in vitro will have an important bearing on the long-term opportunity to use fertility drugs in vitro instead of administration to patients for IVF. This would dramatically reduce the cost of IVF and the side-effects of hyperstimulation of ovaries of patients and the associated sequelae. The research project is a discovery program leading to the identification of the genes that govern oogenesis in the human. It is only recently that techniques have been developed to sufficient sensitivity to detect the small quantities of RNA proceeded by active genes in the individual germ cells and oocytes.