Of Mice and (wo)Men: Purified Oogonial Stem Cells from Mouse and Human Ovaries

Abstract

When it comes to reproducing, James Brown summed up the human experience: This is a man's world. Women produce a limited number of viable eggs (probably considerably fewer than 400) and become reproductively senescent in the forth or fifth decade of life. In contrast, men produce millions of sperm per day, with little evidence of age-related decline, and can father offspring into their seventh decade and beyond—if they can find willing mates. Universal agreement exists that a germline stem cell population in the testis makes continuous sperm production possible. The existence of a corresponding stem germ cell population in the ovary, however, has been the subject of intense debate. The latest chapter in this debate was recently published online in Nature Medicine [1]. What makes this paper especially noteworthy is that it provides the first evidence that isolation techniques used to obtain putative oogonial stem cells (OSCs) from the mouse ovary can be used to isolate similar cells from human ovaries.