January Discussion

This article was an interesting read. I think scientists should stay open minded when conducting research, to draw inferences and make connections with other medical issues that can be solved. In addition, researchers should be willing able to adapt different techniques and approaches if the results of their study are not what are looking for and this paper demonstrated exactly that. Firstly, the fact that nuclear membrane protein 1 (NEMP1) is not widely studied in humans but can be studied in animals using different animal models such as frogs, roundworms, zebrafish, fruit flies and mice indicates an alternative approach to study human diseases in animal models using genetic techniques. Moreover, the results of this study were fascinating as the researchers investigated the role of missing gene (NEMP1) leading to poor egg development in fruit flies, and further measured the stiffness of the egg’s nuclear envelope using atomic force microscopy. I think it is important to further investigate variants in this gene (NEMP1) using CRISPR gene-editing technique to study associations between mutations in NEMP1 and their effect on early menopause and infertility in humans. It is suggested that researchers would like to explore fertility issues linked to mutations in NEMP1 to establish a causal link between NEMP1 and infertility. However, I think researchers can gain better insight by studying the correlation between mutations in NEMP1 gene and its impact on egg’s nuclear envelope stiffness. In conclusion, I think scientists can potentially solve human infertility issues by using CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing technique in knock-out mice models to study mutations in NEMP1 gene variants to potentially fix and restore NEMP1 genes that can help support egg’s nuclear envelope stiffness.

This was a very interesting and relevant issue that many women are facing. I agree with what Sabrina said that during research, how many other side projects pop up but are not fully studied. This is very true, and you start to wonder, do scientist consider these associations with another issue or did they disregard the connections? We must stay open minded when conducting research, take in consideration of other factors or information that could possibly help find relations to other issues, just like this article did. They initially were studying eyesight but then found a relationship between fertility and the mutation in the NEMP gene. I agree with everyone, even though this article discovers a correlation between infertility and missing the nucleus in the RBC of mice, they need to conduct more research on humans, in order to see if this relationship has an effect on women who are experiencing infertility. This was a great read, interested to see if this is a possible reason for women's infertility issues.

This month's article was a very interesting read! First of all, the researchers were not even trying to find an association between the gene under question and fertility; they were trying to inquire more on eye development. This just shows that when we start researching a topic, we have to be open to other interesting findings as well. There are so many aspects to research that we don't think of before starting the research and they come up in the final results later. The correlation between the gene and fertility then came into question as the gene is expressed throughout the whole body but only the reproductive cells were affected. This article introduced atomic force microscopy; something I have never heard of before and allowed me to read about it more. Mice, zebrafish, worms, and flies were experimented but there is still a need of more research before testing on humans. it would be interesting to know if the mutation in the NEMP gene in women is the reason to their infertility!

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