Figure - PMC

Skip to main content

An official website of the United States government

Here's how you know

Here's how you know

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

View full-text article in PMC

. 2015 Sep 19;21(6):711–726. doi: 10.1093/humupd/dmv042

Search in PMC
Search in PubMed
View in NLM Catalog
Add to search

© The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology.

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

PMC Copyright notice

A schematic representing the hypothetical relative contributions of the egg, sperm and uterus to a successful live birth. The relative contribution of the sperm to a successful live birth can be hypothesized to be 10–15%. Aneuploidy and maternal age studies show that overall the egg's contribution is greater and could be hypothesized to be 70–80%, however when the paternal component is abnormal (red) it can drastically affect the ability of an embryo to reach the blastocyst stage and/or a fetus to develop and result in a live birth.