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Adelaide researchers have discovered a way to improve the chances of a woman becoming pregnant later in life.
The University of Adelaide’s Robinson Research Institute has discovered a way to repair “bad” or “damaged” eggs to make them “good” again.
Dr Hannah Brown started the research project in 2012 to try to understand more about the differences between good and bad eggs.
“We looked inside eggs and we found haemoglobin, which is the protein or the thing that’s inside red blood cells that makes them red,” she said.
“But also we found they’re on the inside [of] eggs that we use to make a baby.”
Dr Brown said the haemoglobin was present at very high levels in good eggs but it was missing from bad eggs.
“When we looked at those bad eggs — we knew that there was lots of things, there are lots of ways that your eggs can get bad or broken and we thought, well perhaps [haemoglobin] playing some important role that’s missing in bad eggs,” she said.
“What we did was add it back to those bad eggs and make them function more efficiently. We were really excited by that outcome.”
The research team has since been able to take a broken egg and mend it by adding haemoglobin.
