Drosophila germ cells form at the posterior pole of the embryo and migrate to the somatic gonad. Approximately 50% of the germ cells that form reach their target. The errant cells within the embryo undergo developmentally regulated cell death. Prior studies have identified some autosomal genes that regulate germ cell migration, but the genes that control germ cell death are not known. To identi...

Germ cells are required for the successful propagation of sexually reproducing species. Understanding the mechanisms by which these cells are specified and how their totipotency is established and maintained has important biomedical and evolutionary implications. Freshwater planarians serve as fascinating models for studying these questions. They can regenerate germ cells from fragments of adul...

Primordial germ cell development uses programmed cell death to remove abnormal, misplaced or excess cells. Precise control of this process is essential to maintain the continuity and integrity of the germline, and to prevent germ cells from colonizing locations other than the gonads. Through careful analyses of primordial germ cell distribution in developing Drosophila melanogaster embryos, we ...

BACKGROUND Mouse embryonic stem (ES) cells can differentiate into female and male germ cells in vitro. Primate ES cells can also differentiate into immature germ cells in vitro. However, little is known about the differentiation markers and culture conditions for in vitro germ cell differentiation from ES cells in primates. Monkey ES cells are thus considered to be a useful model to study prima...

Transforming growth factor β1 (TGF-β1) is a polypeptide with various biological activities. Recent studies have shown that this and they receptors are expressed in human Leydig cells, Sertoli spermatogonia, spermatocytes sperm cells after birth, involved the endocrine regulation of spermatogenesis. However, there no report on expression TGF-β embryonic testis. TGF-β1 peptide widely distributed ...

background: long term alcohol use has been implicated in men with sexual disorders including suppression of testosterone levels as well as testicular morphological changes. objective: this research investigated the ability of telfairia occidentalis (t.o.) to attenuate the damaging effects of alcohol on the testicular parameters. materials and methods: thirty male sprague-dawley rats, 170-190 gr...

Background During mammalian spermatogenesis unique and dynamic epigenetic events occur leading to chromatin condensation. Through these events, histone demethylases such as JMJD1A play important roles in compaction of sperm chromatin, due to regulation of histone methylation dynamics and alteration of chromatin structure. As �histone methylation� is one of the best-characterized modifications i...

BACKGROUND Cancer/testis antigens (CTAs) are expressed in several cancers and during normal adult male germ cell differentiation. Little is known about their role in fetal development of human germ cells. METHODS We examined expression of the CTAs MAGE-A1, GAGE and NY-ESO-1 in fetal gonads by single and double immunohistochemical staining. RESULTS We found that GAGE was expressed in the pri...

Germinal epithelium of seminiferous tubules in adult, infertile hypodactylous males displays significant reduction in the number of germ-line cells. Detection of apoptosis in the germ-line cells during postnatal differentiation was performed to elucidate the mechanism of the decreased number of germ cells in the testes of adult rats. Evaluation of DNA fragmentation and expression of activated c...

Studies of human germ cell development are limited in large part by inaccessibility of germ cells during development. Moreover, although several studies have reported differentiation of mouse and human germ cells from pluripotent stem cells (PSCs) in vitro, differentiation of human germ cells from PSCs in vivo has not been reported. Here, we tested whether mRNA reprogramming in combination with...