Rising Stars & Reproduction Series
Why semen analysis sucks and what we can do about it.
Speaker: Cameron A. Schmidt, PhD | Assistant Professor, Department of Biology, East Carolina University
Computer-Aided Semen Analysis (CASA) is the most practical method for assessing male fertility. Though CASA can discriminate extreme cases of pathology like very low sperm counts or complete immotility, its ability to diagnose less obvious causes of infertility remains limited, and CASA is not widely adopted in clinical diagnostics. CASA has remained largely unchanged since its introduction in the 1980’s, despite massive technological advances in both hardware and software for single-cell data acquisition. In this talk, I will have the pleasure of presenting some of our recent work on computational modeling, data acquisition, and statistical analysis, demonstrating that next-generation CASA will soon be attainable.
Polycomb Repressive-Deubiquitinase Complex safeguards oocytes epigenome and female fertility by restraining Polycomb activity
Speaker: Zhiyuan (ZY) Chen, PhD | Assistant Professor, Division of Developmental Biology and the Reproductive Sciences Center, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital
Recently, we identified BAP1 as a key negative regulator of Polycomb activity in oocytes. BAP1 limits excessive H2AK119ub1 accumulation and protects broad H3K27ac-marked euchromatin from ectopic H3K27me3 deposition. BAP1 loss in oocytes impairs the maternal-to-zygotic transition and enhances activation of ZGA genes, ultimately compromising preimplantation development. We are currently conducting in-depth mechanistic understanding of BAP1 recruitment and function in regulating oocyte epigenome and female fertility.
