Ovarian Somatic Stem Cells The Role of Epigenetic on Infertility

Infertility is a multifactorial disorder which could be caused by male and female factors. There are some approaches to recog-nize the mechanisms of infertility, one of them is epigenetic. Epigenetics defines as heritable and reversible forms of gene activity and expression without any DNA sequence modifica-tion. Recently, the presence of aberrant DNA methylation of imprinted genes and reproduction-related genes might be help-ful to define unexplained infertility. Male and female germi-nal cells due to the possible transgenerational effects related to epigenetic modifications, undergo differentiation into matured sperm and oocyte cells. Epigenetic modifications could affect reproduction by (1) gametogenesis failure; (2) embryogenesis defect; (3) outcome of assisted reproduction technique (ART) protocols and (4), long-term effects on offspring lifetime.

Keywords:

Infertility , Epigenetics , Gametogenesis , Embryogen-esis , Transgenerational Effect