Ph.D.

Professor

Division of Animal Sciences

Professor

Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology & Women's Health

Peter Sutovsky is a Professor of Animal Science in the College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources, University of Missouri, also appointed as Professor of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Women’s Health at the School of Medicine, University of Missouri Health System. Since the early 90’s, Sutovsky has studied mammalian gametogenesis, fertilization, and pre-implantation embryonic development with special emphasis on the gamete and zygotic ubiquitin-proteasome system (UPS), publishing his work in Nature, Nature Communications, Nature Medicine, PNAS and other prestigious journals. He was the first to describe the role of UPS in the regulation of mitochondrial inheritance and introduced a novel concept of extracellular UPS, which has been validated in reproduction and outside the reproductive biology field. In particular, he demonstrated the importance of sperm borne proteasomes for mammalian fertilization and the role of UPS in epididymal sperm quality control, a mechanism relevant to male fertility evaluation in livestock, and the diagnosis and treatment of human male fertility. Peter’s collaborative research on the biogenesis and post-fertilization processing of sperm head perinuclear theca influenced the optimization and safeguarding of assisted reproductive technologies/therapies such as in vitro fertilization (IVF) and intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI). Other notable collaborations include the development of transgenic pig model for the study of 26S proteasome and work on rodent model of human endometriosis. Lately, the Sutovsky laboratory has also been focusing on the identification and phenotyping of rare deleterious gene polymorphisms affecting male fertility, biomarker-based flow cytometric semen analysis and semen nanopurification aimed at improving conception rates in livestock artificial insemination (AI).

Educational background

• Ph.D., Institute of Animal Physiology and Genetics, Czech Academy of Sciences, Libechov, Czech Republic

Courses taught

• AnSci 9433: Gamete and Embryo Development
• AnSci 9434: Gonadal Function, Gamete Development and Reproductive Technologies