• Question: why did you choose to study human egg cells why not something else?

    Asked by mobees11 to Katie on 13 Nov 2012. This question was also asked by ssl12, drsweetman.
    • Photo: Katie Howe

      Katie Howe answered on 13 Nov 2012:

      Hi mobees 11, thanks for your question!

      I find egg cells really interesting – In fact I find everything to do with fertility fascinating!

      Before I worked on eggs I worked on sperm in a lab in oxford. I was trying to investigate whether the sperm from infertile men lacks a certain molecule called PLC zeta. The idea was if we could replace this molecule then the sperm would work better and the men would be able to have children.

      Although, I don’t actually work on human eggs because it is very difficult to get real human eggs to do research on. This is because many people have ethical problems with it. Instead I use mouse eggs – these are very similar to human eggs as we are both mammals. We think that by understanding more about how mouse eggs work we will be able to understand why eggs get a bit dodgy in older women and will be able to help them have children.

Comments

  • Photo: mobees11

    mobees11 commented on :

    thanks for answering my question i was really excited to be able to have a live chat with you, and i was also really happy that my teacher told my table that our scientist was you. i am really happy that you are trying to find a way that older women can have children with out any problems . the reason being was that my mum was about 40 when she had me and she cant tell me enough how happy she was when she found out that i was really healthy and i had know probs because she had explain how older woman sometime struggle to have healthy babies with out probs . so thanks again and i hope you’ll reply and i’ll speak to you again

  • Photo: Katie

    Katie commented on :

    Hi mobees11. Thanks so much for your reply! I also had a similar kind of thing – my mum was 41 when my brother was born and the doctors told her after the scan that they thought he had Downs syndrome (I dont know if you have heard of it so here is a link:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_syndrome). It is much more common in babies from older mothers because the eggs are so old and often have the wrong number of chromosomes.

    When he was actually born he was perfectly healthy. But thats what first got me interested in this area of research. Now that women sometimes choose to have women later because they want a career first it is becoming even more likley that they will have problems with dodgy eggs. That’s why I think this is such an interesting area to work in – i am really glad you find it interesting too! 😀