IVF is thus learning the vocabulary of Cyclins and CDKs. Why, for instance, is it sometimes tough to harvest eggs from some women, despite hormonal stimulation? In 2016, a group of researchers demonstrated that the very molecules that Nurse, Hartwell, and Hunt had discovered—Cyclins and CDKs—are involved. As long as one such combination, CDK-1 and a Cyclin, remains inactive in egg cells, the cell remains dormant. Quiescent. In G-zero. Release these molecules and activate them, and the egg cells begin to mature. If the eggs mature “prematurely,” as it were, they are progressively lost over
...more
