Around one in 20 men is infertile, but despite the best efforts of scientists, in many cases the underlying causes of infertility have remained a mystery. New findings by a team of Australian and Swedish researchers, however, will go a long way towards explaining this mystery. According to their research published in Science today, a small set of genes located within the power-plants of our cells – the mitochondria – are crucial to unravelling the secrets of male infertility. Most of our genes are subjected to a rigorous quality-control process that prevents harmful mutations from freely accumulating within the gene pools of most species. If nasty mutations appear, then the individuals that harbor these mutations tend to do very poorly when it comes to reproducing and surviving, and hence these mutations are kept at low levels within the general population.
