Harvard researchers have found new evidence that female mammals can produce egg cells throughout life and have traced their production out of the ovary and into the bone marrow in findings that could both reshape science's understanding of female reproduction and provide new avenues for treatment of infertility.
In a series of experiments on sterile female mice, researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), a Harvard teaching hospital, were able to restore egg production by transplanting bone marrow from fertile mice. The researchers believe that egg stem cells in the donor bone marrow established themselves in the sterile mice and began producing egg cells, also called oocytes.
