Greetings,
I would appreciate your feedback on the issue of high cell losses in
early development (this may be important for understanding aging).
Specifically, I wonder whether the following statement is correct:
"The female human fetus at age 4-5 months possesses 6-7 million eggs
(oocytes). By birth, this number drops to 1-2 million and declines
even further. At the start of puberty in normal girls, there are only
0.3-0.5 million eggs -- just only 4-8% of initial numbers."
Are there any other similar examples of early massive cell loss?
Or is this story specific to oocytes only?
Best wishes,
-- Leonid Gavrilov
Author of the book "The Biology of Life Span"
http://www.src.uchicago.edu/~gavr1/index.html#Book
