News from the secret world of the egg cell

Scientists at the IMBA (Institute of Molecular Biotechnology) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences have discovered that the division of mammalian egg cells depends on cohesin proteins that embrace chromosomes before birth and are not renewed thereafter. The cohesin complex is remarkably long-lived but eventually lost irreversibly from chromosomes. The inability of egg cells to renew the ties that hold chromosomes together might contribute to maternal age-related chromosome missegregation and aneu