• Question: hey katie just wondering what made you interested in this perticular subject?

    Asked by killaamons to Callum, Gina, Katie, Michelle, Sam on 15 Nov 2012. This question was also asked by 11duffye.
    • Photo: Katie Howe

      Katie Howe answered on 15 Nov 2012:

      hi killaamons,

      I first became interested in reproduction when I visited a fertility clinic. Here they use a process called in vitro fertilisation (or IVF) to help people to have children. What happens is scientists take egg cells and sperm cells and put them into a glass dish until the egg gets fertilised by the sperm. The embryo that results then gets transferred back into the mother and will hopefully result in her having a healthy baby. This technique is used a lot to help people with fertility problems.

      I found this really exciting and decided I wanted to work on something to do with fertlity!

      Now I do research into how and why a womens eggs get more dodgy as they get older. We want to see if eggs from older women are missing some key molecule. If we put this molecule back into the dodgy eggs we hope we can make the eggs healthier and help older women to have healthy children.

      Thank you for your questions!

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