Research

Eggs and sperm are made by a specialised type of cell division called meiosis. A high proportion of human eggs are faulty because they have the wrong number of chromosomes, and this risk increases in older mothers. Fusion of such defective eggs with a sperm results in infertility, miscarriage, and developmental disorders like Down Syndrome. Meiosis has been studied in many organisms like mice, yeast and fruit flies, but rarely directly in human eggs, despite its important role in human reproduction. Our scientific project aims to understand how normal and abnormal human eggs form. In a collaborative partnership between Edinburgh and Warwick Universities, our team of clinical reproduction scientists and cell biologists are using donated eggs and early embryos from IVF clinics to understand the causes of infertility. We are also growing human eggs outside the body to accelerate fertility research. We use molecular markers to light up the machinery that sorts the DNA into the egg and distributes it during the cell divisions of early embryos. This research aims to provide a better understanding of the pathways that make human eggs and identify the causes of infertility.

The goal of our public engagement project is to provide reciprocal understanding between patients and researchers to guide our research and improve the IVF experience. We want to know from patients what they find most challenging about IVF and where our research can provide benefit. In parallel, we hope to engage patients in discourse to share our up-to-the date knowledge about why many human eggs are bad. We anticipate two primary outcomes from our engagement. First, we hope to empower patients with scientific understanding that alleviates self-blame and stigma surrounding IVF. Second, we hope to identify the key areas in which our scientific research will have the maximum impact on patients.