The seemingly paradox of inherited infertility- theory, computational population genetics, and case stduies

Infertility is strongly selected against, as the amount of offspring is reduced. Nevertheless, infertility is not a rare syndrome, in humans and other animals, and many known hereditary cases are known. This seemingly paradox can be resolved by taking into account the sex-specific expression of many genes that are essential for fertility. Most of the processes crucial for fertility, including gametogenesis, are different between males and females of many organisms. A very large number of genes essential for fertility are thus specifically expressed in either male or females. Harmful mutations in such genes affect only the sex they are expressed in and are propagated in the population by the other sex.

I will describe the theory and verifications of sex-differential gene-expression in computational population genetics, sex-differential transcriptomes of humans, and specific case studies of inherited infertility.