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Reproductive ageing

Of worms and women

Nature volume 468, pages 386–387 (2010)Cite this article

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In roundworms, age-related decline in egg quality is regulated by specific humoral signalling pathways. If similar mechanisms operate in mammals, these findings may suggest ways to delay reproductive ageing in women.

Female mammals are not alone in experiencing an age-related increase in birth defects and decline in fertility; the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans faces similar reproductive challenges in mid-adulthood. Writing in Cell, Luo et al.1 report that, in C. elegans, the age-related decline in oocyte (egg) quality and increase in chromosomal abnormalities are regulated by evolutionarily conserved signal-transduction pathways. If this senescence mechanism is also conserved, age-related decline in the quality of mammalian oocytes may not be, as is commonly thought, simply due to the old age of these cells or the diminishing size of the ovarian follicle pool; it may also be influenced by molecular signalling cascades.

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Figure 1: Neuroendocrine regulation of reproductive ageing1.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Kevin Flurkey and David E. Harrison are in The Jackson Laboratory, Bar Harbor, Maine 04609, USA. david.harrison@jax.org,

    Kevin Flurkey & David E. Harrison

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  1. Kevin Flurkey
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  2. David E. Harrison
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Flurkey, K., Harrison, D. Of worms and women. Nature 468, 386–387 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/468386a

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