Mechanism and regulation of chromosome replication

我们的研究是试图找出我们如何将正确数量的染色体传递给我们的孩子。这个过程中的错误在人类中很常见，可能导致流产和唐氏综合症。我们知道，这些错误在母亲的卵子中比在父亲的精子中更常见，而且在年长母亲的卵子中更常见。我们还知道，基因突变会导致发育中的卵子和精子的染色体行为受到严重影响，以至于有这些突变的人无法生育。染色体在发育中的卵子和精子中的行为很难在人类身上进行研究，因此我们将创造新的转基因小鼠来帮助我们研究为什么错误数量的染色体经常遗传给我们的孩子，以及这是如何受到年龄增长的影响的。我们还将创造新的转基因小鼠，以帮助我们了解能够影响发育中的卵子和精子的染色体行为的突变类型，这种突变严重到足以导致不育。我们希望这项研究将帮助我们开发未来的方法，以改善精子和卵子发育过程中的染色体行为，减少遗传给我们孩子的遗传病的数量。

Our research is trying to find out how we pass on the right number of chromosomes to our children. Mistakes in this process are very common in humans and can cause miscarriage and Down's Syndrome. We know that these mistakes are more common in a mother’s eggs than in a father’s sperm, and are much more common in eggs of older mothers. We also know that genetic mutations can cause chromosome behaviour in developing eggs and sperm to be so severely affected that people with these mutations are infertile.The behaviour of the chromosomes in developing eggs and sperm is difficult to study in humans, therefore we will create new genetically modified mice to help us study why the wrong number of chromosomes are often passed on to our children and how this is affected by ageing. We will also create new genetically modified mice to help us understand the type of mutations that can affect chromosome behaviour in developing eggs and sperm severely enough to cause infertility. We hope that this research will help us develop future approaches to improve chromosome behaviour in developing sperm and eggs and reduce the amount of genetic disease passed on to our children.