from the sperm?-wang?-we-couldn't-make-this-up! dept.
Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
While some of our body's cells divide in a matter of hours, the process of making sperm, meiosis, alone takes about 14 days from start to finish. And fully six of those days are spent in the stage known as the pachytene, when pairs of chromosomes from an individual's mother and father align and connect.
"This stage is really important, because the pair needs to be aligned for the exchange of genetic material between those two chromosomes," says P. Jeremy Wang, a biologist in Penn's School of Veterinary Medicine. "If anything goes wrong at this stage, it can cause a defect in meiosis and problems in the resulting sperm, leading to infertility, pregnancy loss, or birth defects."
In a new paper in Science Advances, Wang and colleagues have identified an enzyme that plays a crucial role in maintaining this chromosomal pairing during the pachytene stage of meiosis. Without this protein, named SKP1, meiosis cannot proceed to metaphase, the next major developmental stage involved in generating sperm cells.
The finding may help overcome hurdles that have stood in the way of treating certain forms of male infertility, in which a man makes no sperm but in whom sperm's precursor cells, spermatogonia, can be found.
"Reproductive technologies like in vitro fertilization have made a huge difference for infertile patients, but the male needs to have at least some sperm," says Wang. "If the male has no sperm, then the only option is to use donor sperm. But if you can find these spermatogonia, the pre-meiotic germ cells, they could be induced to go through meiosis and make sperm. So SKP1 could be part of the solution to ensuring meiosis continues."
Wang is also hopeful that his finding could aid in basic research on sperm development that his and many other labs pursue. "Right now we use animals to do our research; we don't have a cell culture system to produce sperm," he says. "Manipulating SKP1 and the pathway in which it acts could allow us to set up an in vitro system to produce sperm artificially, which would be a boon for our studies."
[...] "Now that we know SKP1 is required, we're looking for the proteins it interacts with upstream and downstream so we can study this pathway," says Wang.
Journal Reference:
Yongjuan Guan, N. Adrian Leu, Jun Ma, Lukáš Chmátal, Gordon Ruthel, Jordana C. Bloom, Michael A. Lampson, John C. Schimenti, Mengcheng Luo, P. Jeremy Wang. SKP1 drives the prophase I to metaphase I transition during male meiosis. Science Advances, 2020; 6 (13): eaaz2129 DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aaz2129
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 28 2020, @01:00PM (17 children)
the world has too many people
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 28 2020, @01:09PM (16 children)
People in developed countries are not replacing themselves (white people, Koreans, Japanese, Chinese etc.).
It absolutely has no effect on the world population if they take fertility treatments. Black Africa and India are another matter, as well as much of the Muslim world. Basically, the poor and uncivilized are the ones having the kids.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 28 2020, @01:21PM (2 children)
China is not a developed country. Their fertility rate is only low because it was legally forced to be low. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-child_policy [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 28 2020, @01:42PM (1 child)
You are right that that policy started the fertility drop, but you are wrong that that is the reason in modern times for it to continue. I'm afraid joining the modern industrialized economy has made China like the rest of us:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2020/01/16/business/china-birth-rate-2019.amp.html [google.com]
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday March 28 2020, @02:34PM
https://web.archive.org/web/20200326133024/https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/16/business/china-birth-rate-2019.html [archive.org]
http://archive.is/Ck97N [archive.is]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Saturday March 28 2020, @02:47PM (10 children)
That's so obviously wrong, and you know it. If an infertile westerner undergoes a fertility treatment and is then able to have three children (that they otherwise wouldn't), then the world population quite obviously just went up by three. Rinse and repeat. Those three extra kids will eat foods over their lifetime that require large areas of agricultural land and large amounts of energy to produce. They'll create tons of plastic waste, much of which will end up as microplastics damaging ecosystems. Their existence will likely cause a large amount of CO2 to be produced which will accelerate climate change. And if they each have children of their own, all these problems will continue to multiply.
error count exceeds 100; stopping compilation
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Saturday March 28 2020, @02:50PM (2 children)
I hasten to qualify this by saying that once the children's parents die, if the children survive, the population has effectively increased by one.
error count exceeds 100; stopping compilation
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 29 2020, @04:06AM (1 child)
by acid andy ...@02:47PM
by acid andy ...@02:50PM
Does 3 minutes qualify as haste? ;-)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 29 2020, @05:24AM
According to his wife, yes.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday March 28 2020, @04:20PM (6 children)
Fortunately, it's not infertility that's holding back the teeming Western hordes.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Saturday March 28 2020, @04:45PM (2 children)
I think even if each one of their descendants has three children, that would still create over ten billion people after 56 generations.
Each generation of their family would be 3/2 times the size of the one that preceded it.
(3/2)56 = 7,262,907,400.88
7,262,907,400.88 x 2 = 14,525,814,801.76
Did I get that right?
error count exceeds 100; stopping compilation
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday March 28 2020, @04:59PM
"IF". So are each one of their fertile descendants having three kids apiece? Is infertility what's holding the developed world back?
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Saturday March 28 2020, @09:44PM
OK, I totally suck at math. A family can't have 0.76 children. It's 21 generations for a single couple to produce a generation of more than 10 billion children.
Just 321 = 10,460,353,203
error count exceeds 100; stopping compilation
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 28 2020, @05:25PM (2 children)
...to have ten billion children...
It makes me cringe to think how sore that poor fellow would be. Ouch.
(Score: 2, Informative) by khallow on Saturday March 28 2020, @06:49PM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Saturday March 28 2020, @08:14PM
That's one big park. I suppose you could fit more in if they arrange themselves into a human pyramid.
error count exceeds 100; stopping compilation
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 29 2020, @12:09AM (1 child)
People in developed countries are also responsible for much more carbon emissions and resource usage. Ideally, every country should be working on reducing its population. A comprehensive sex education, free birth control, and reproductive freedom helps greatly with this.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Sunday March 29 2020, @08:21PM
Educating women also seem to be effective.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday March 28 2020, @01:38PM (5 children)
I've not met a man yet who ever successfully got pregnant. Women do it - mostly with ease. Women are quite fertile. Guys? Not so much. I think what they're concerned about here, is male impotence. Some guys shoot blanks, some guys shoot duds, some guys shoot the real thing.
Now that we've established that, I'd like to talk to Myrtle, the fertile turtle.
Two points to the nerds who remember where that came from.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 28 2020, @02:09PM (2 children)
Impotence = Not able to gear up in order to shoot. May well still be fertile.
Infertility = Shoot as many duds as you want, it's not gonna achieve anything that lasts.
Ask any half-educated non-virgin woman about the difference... :-)
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday March 28 2020, @03:18PM (1 child)
Alright - and how do virility and motility figure into your lexicon? Again - women are readily fertile, the term is misapplied to men.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 28 2020, @07:05PM
Virility, as per Wikipedia, "refers to any of a wide range of masculine characteristics viewed positively". Hence, it has no business being in this discussion.
Motility in this context = Can they or can't they swim properly. As such it definitely is linked to male (in)fertility, but not to impotence. Bad motility is however not the only possible cause for male infertility.
You are simply mistaken in claiming that fertility only applies to women. As per Wikipedia, "Fertility is the natural capability to produce offspring" and as per the Encyclopedia Britannica https://www.britannica.com/science/fertility) [britannica.com] it is the "... ability of an individual or couple to reproduce through normal sexual activity", after which it lists all relevant requirements - both male and female. ).
-
Not wanting to admit that you're wrong, you're now trying a "but what about..." in order to divert attention. Won't work.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Saturday March 28 2020, @07:44PM
Are you sure it isn't soil that's fertile, and and the term was misapplied to animals?
In all seriousness, fertility = the natural capability to produce offspring. That applies equally well to men and women. We may not help gestate the offspring, but we still have a vital role to play in producing them.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Sunday March 29 2020, @12:24AM
Honestly, if they want to make money off this research, they should figure out how to CAUSE the lack of the enzyme and offer male birth control so that men can better control their futures. Yeah I know, condoms. And they've failed to prevent baby daddies for ages.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 28 2020, @05:38PM
> maintaining this chromosomal pairing
So we name it “skip one”? WTF
(Score: 5, Insightful) by inertnet on Saturday March 28 2020, @10:47PM (4 children)
It's nice that they're trying to treat infertility, but they could make a lot more money creating a male contraceptive.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 29 2020, @12:17AM (2 children)
Doctors and countries could also stop being paternalistic about sterilization. So many women and men who don't want children are denied sterilization that they want, because the doctor thinks they may regret it. This is despite the fact that people who don't have children are the least likely to regret being sterilized. Not to mention, having children is encouraged by societies all over the world, and these same doctors don't seem to care about people who regret having children.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 29 2020, @05:27AM (1 child)
As a doctor of my acquaintance put it: "America is the only country where medical decisions are made in the courtroom."
I don't know whether it's strictly correct, but it might well shine a light on why some doctors are hesitant to perform sterilisations without, at least, in-depth and detailed discussion and the signing of many waivers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 29 2020, @06:20AM
In-depth and detailed discussion is perfectly fine. Making sure the patient understands the procedure is perfectly fine and advisable. Even waivers are fine. What's not fine is denying childless people sterilizations because they 'might regret it,' because 'all women want babies,' or other such nonsense. People, and especially women, really have to doctor shop to find someone willing to sterilization them.
If they're just worried about lawsuits, the studies make it clear that they should worry more about people who already have children, as they are more likely to regret being sterilized.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Sunday March 29 2020, @05:11AM
What we need is an easily applied, and easily reversed permanent male contraceptive. There's supposed to be one in the works where they inject something into your sperm ducts that blocks the sperm, but otherwise leaves everything alone, and doesn't require any surgery (just two small injections, no cutting). And if you ever want it removed, two simple injections can dissolve the blockage, rendering you fertile again. Easier and less painful than a vasectomy, and more easily and reliably reversed, and cheaper all the around too.