Scientists found the protein that guards a woman's eggs for decades

A woman's eggs are formed before she is born, then wait — sometimes for 40 years — without dividing. How do their chromosomes stay correctly linked for all that time? A team led by Kei-ichiro Ishiguro at Chiba University in Japan, with RIKEN colleagues, reports in Nature Aging the discovery of OMC1, a previously unknown protein that sits on egg chromosomes from before birth through adulthood, holding their connections in place. Mice without it developed chromosome errors resembling reproductive aging; restoring it partly repaired them. Understanding this lifelong maintenance crew could one day inform fertility care — for now, it answers a beautiful basic question.

SDG 3 · Good health and well-being — Mechanism: tech innovation