{"id":2372,"date":"2023-10-27T21:05:21","date_gmt":"2023-10-27T21:05:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bedfordresearch.org\/symposium\/?p=2372"},"modified":"2026-10-14T19:52:21","modified_gmt":"2026-10-14T19:52:21","slug":"david-keefe-md-oocyte-keynote-retrotransposition-and-early-embryo-development","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bedfordresearch.org\/symposium\/david-keefe-md-oocyte-keynote-retrotransposition-and-early-embryo-development\/","title":{"rendered":"David Keefe, MD, Oocyte Keynote \u2013 \u201cRetrotransposition and early embryo development\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">David Keefe, MD, Oocyte Keynote, NYU Ob\/Gyn, Professor, Department of Cell Biology at NYU Grossman School of Medicine <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Dr. Keefe is an internationally recognized clinician scientist whose early work focused on the role of telomeres in mammalian gametes and has more recently been involved in studies of parthenogenesis and retroelement expression. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"David Keefe, MD, Oocyte Keynote \u2013 \u201cRetrotransposition and early embryo development\u201d\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/dvg9WJ7jBlU?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">David Keefe, MD, Oocyte Keynote \u2013 \u201cRetrotransposition and early embryo development\u201d<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Dr. Keefe traced the answer to telomeres, the protective caps on our chromosomes, and their surprising partnership with \u201cjumping genes\u201d called retrotransposons. He proposed that the early embryo rapidly rebuilds its telomeres without telomerase, and may even rewrite parts of its own genome along the way. He also drew a striking line between tumor and embryo biology:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>\u201cCancers are not wildly innovative; they co-opt things that were developed.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And on the power of the egg itself:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>\u201cIf you take a 40-year-old woman and you give her a 20-year-old egg, she\u2019s got the 20-year-old\u2019s fertility.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>David Keefe, MD, Oocyte Keynote, NYU Ob\/Gyn, Professor, Department of Cell Biology at NYU Grossman School of Medicine Dr. Keefe is an internationally recognized clinician scientist whose early work focused on the role of telomeres in mammalian gametes and has more recently been involved in studies of parthenogenesis and retroelement expression. Dr. Keefe traced the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2408,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-2023-human-egg-activation_the-influence-of-sperm","category-keynote"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bedfordresearch.org\/symposium\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bedfordresearch.org\/symposium\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bedfordresearch.org\/symposium\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bedfordresearch.org\/symposium\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bedfordresearch.org\/symposium\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2372"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.bedfordresearch.org\/symposium\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2372\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2801,"href":"https:\/\/www.bedfordresearch.org\/symposium\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2372\/revisions\/2801"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bedfordresearch.org\/symposium\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2408"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bedfordresearch.org\/symposium\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bedfordresearch.org\/symposium\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bedfordresearch.org\/symposium\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}