Screening of genes involved in chromosome segregation in meiosis I

Prophase I of meiosis involves dynamic chromosome segregation processes including synapsis, meiotic recombination, and cohesion. Genetic defects in genes participating in these processes consistently cause reproduction failure in mice. To identify candidate genes responsible for infertility or recurrent pregnancy loss in humans, we performed expression profiling of male and female gonads of mice undergoing meiotic prophase I. Both male and female gonads at 15.5 days postcoitum, neonatal day 1 and 10 weeks postpartum were dissected from mice for RNA extraction and subjected to hybridization on Affymetrix microarrays.