Follicular renewal

Today was the first day of lectures and it wasn't so bad! Well, I guess this is considering that we had 3 lectures planned and we only really had a true lecture in one of those classes. The other two were still yet more orientating stuff.

Anyway, an interesting idea was brought up in the "Gametogenesis, Errors, and Chromosomal Abnormalities" lecture and is the title of this blog. It's especially awesome for women. Basically, follicular renewal is the idea that some cells in a woman's ovaries can actually regenerate. This would mean that women are not limited to the ~400,000 primary oocytes (think: premature eggs) that are developed at the time they are a fetus, but could in fact have many, many more. Additionally, it could also mean that our previous theory that all 400,000 or so primary oocytes are developed back when the woman was a fetus, could be mistaken! There could, in fact, be many that are developed later in life!

Pretty remarkable!!!! Go science!

Note: unfortunately, my professor did mention that this theory is not yet completely validated so it could very well be fictional, but she indicated that this is the direction the field is going!