In our Institute lumpy skin disease virus is grown on primary lamb testis cells for isolation, identification and vaccine production. However, the availability of lambs in Kenya has been seriously reduced over the past few years. This has led to an increase in the cost of using primary lamb testis cells. This study was undertaken to investigate other primary cell lines, which are easily availab...

background: date palm pollen (dpp) and astragalus genus are used in some countries for the treatment of infertility. objective: this study was designed to investigate effects of dpp and astragalus ovinus (a.ovinus) on fertility in healthy adult male rats. materials and methods: thirty-six rats were divided into six groups (n=6) including control and five treatment groups. dpp (120, 240 and 360 ...

Protein S is an anticoagulant plasma protein, functioning as a cofactor to activated protein C in the regulation of blood coagulation. In addition, protein S forms a complex with the complement regulatory protein, C4b-binding protein. Protein S is unique among the vitamin K-dependent proteins in being structurally similar to androgen binding proteins. Protein S immunoreactivity was demonstrated...

Metastatic cancer in adults usually has a fatal outcome. In contrast, advanced testicular germ cell tumours are cured in over 80% of patients using cisplatin-based combination chemotherapy [1]. An understanding of why these cells are sensitive to chemotherapeutic drugs is likely to have implications for the treatment of other types of cancer. Earlier measurements indicate that testis tumour cel...

The process of seminiferous cord formation is the first morphological event that differentiates a testis from an ovary and indicates male sex determination. Cord formation occurs by embryonic Day 14 (Day 0 = plug date; E14) in the rat. A series of experiments were conducted to determine if neurotropins and their receptors are important for the process of rat embryonic cord formation. The expres...

Sperm-specific natural selection Sperm cells are genetically haploid, but because of the cytoplasmic bridges that link cells, they can be transcriptionally diploid. However, some gene transcripts not shared. Bhutani et al. sequenced single sperm from mice, cattle, and macaques to determine extent distortion in expression these putatively selfish transcripts, which authors call genoinformative m...

A rete testis cannulation technique was used to compare the secretion of rete testis fluid with the production of spermatozoa and histological testicular parameters in Ile-de-France rams. Thirteen testes were cannulated and rete testis fluid variables were compared to histological variables of the same testis. The rate of flow of rete testis fluid was significantly (P less than or equal to 0.05...

The developmental fate of primordial germ cells in the mammalian gonad depends on their environment. In the XY gonad, Sry induces a cascade of molecular and cellular events leading to the organization of testis cords. Germ cells are sequestered inside testis cords by 12.5 dpc where they arrest in mitosis. If the testis pathway is not initiated, germ cells spontaneously enter meiosis by 13.5 dpc...

Cadmium (Cd) is one of the most toxic environmental heavy metals to organisms. The prominent toxic effects of Cd on reproductive organs are very well known. Gonad histopathology is a valuable tool for the assessment of endocrine disruption compounds EDCs effects on fish. The aim of this study was to evaluate the reproductive toxicity of cadmium chloride (CdCl2) on histopathology of Zebrafish (D...

Spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) is an inherited neuromuscular disease caused by deletion or mutation of SMN1 gene. All SMA patients carry a nearly identical SMN2 gene, which produces low level of SMN protein due to mRNA exon 7 exclusion. Previously, we found that the testis of SMA mice (smn-/- SMN2) expresses high level of SMN2 full-length mRNA, indicating a testis-specific mechanism for SMN2 exo...