An important feature for life is what embryos receive from mom and dad upon fertilization. Oddly enough, centrioles, the structures responsible for cell division and flagella movement, are given by the paternal gamete. How oocytes, the maternal gametes, lose centrioles and the importance of doing so for female fertility has been an enigma since the 1930s. A team led by Mónica Bettencourt-Dias at the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência (IGC; Portugal) have cracked this mystery, shedding light upon a critical mechanism whose deregulation leads to infertility, and that is important for the working of other cell types.
A Critical Inheritance From Dad Ensures Healthy Embryos
