Unpackaging the genetics of mammalian fertility: strategies to identify the "reproductive genome".
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
12-2018
JAX Source
Biol Reprod 2018 Dec; 99(6):1119-1128
Volume
99
Issue
6
First Page
1119
Last Page
1128
ISSN
1529-7268
PMID
29878059
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1093/biolre/ioy133
Abstract
Gene mutations, including different alleles of the same gene, are tremendously useful in deconstructing complex developmental systems, such as reproduction, into component molecular pathways. For this reason, great effort has been devoted in the past three decades to biased (reverse genetic) and unbiased (forward genetic) searches for new genes that impact mammalian reproduction and fertility. These efforts have more recently been complemented with international efforts to systematically mutate all mouse genes and to determine their phenotypes (essentially a hybrid of forward and reverse genetics). Here, we survey the available data on the relative productivity of these approaches in identifying fertility genes, estimate the number of protein-coding genes essential for fertility of males and females, and predict the next major directions in the genetics of reproduction and fertility.
Recommended Citation
Schimenti J,
Handel M.
Unpackaging the genetics of mammalian fertility: strategies to identify the "reproductive genome". Biol Reprod 2018 Dec; 99(6):1119-1128
Comments
We thank Drs John Eppig, Paula Cohen, Miguel Brieno-Enriquez and Laura Reinholdt for discussion and thoughtful comments on the manuscript, and Zoe Reifsnyder for help with the figures.