What happened
Researchers led by Sharif Iqbal at Harvard Medical School transplanted ovaries between young mice and older mice and built an ovarian clock based on gene expression and DNA changes. Older ovaries became molecularly younger in young mice, and young ovaries became older in old mice. Young ovaries also lowered the biological age of the brain, liver and uterus in old recipients, and the younger-body mice with older ovaries gave birth to healthy offspring.
Plain-English summary written by an AI model from the New Scientist story.
The original
- Headline
- Transplanted ovaries adjust to the recipient’s biological age
- From
- New Scientist (news report)
- Published
- Oct 28, 2026
Ovaries from older mice, which were no longer able to reproduce, seemed to become active again when transplanted into younger animals, suggesting the new host's body lowered the organs' molecular age