Background: The objectives of a series of studies undertaken was to improve farm animal reproductive efficiency in terms of embryo production efficiency, conception rate and litter size by immunoneutralization of inhibin in conjunction with other conventional reproductive techniques. Materials and Methods: A recombinant porcine inhibin alpha-subunit mature peptide was produced by mass scale and...

Background: This study was set up to evaluate the effect of ovarian tissue slow freezing on in vitro growth and pattern of maturation genes expression in mouse preantral follicles encapsulated within alginate hydrogel. Materials and Methods: Ovaries of 12-14 days old female NMRI mice were randomly allocated into control and slow freezing groups. In slow freezing group, ovaries were equilibrated...

The aim of this study was to evaluate the effects of ovarian tissue vitrification and two-step in vitro culture on the metaphase II (MII) oocyte reactive oxygen species (ROS) level, mitochondrial transcription factor A (TFAM) expression and succinate dehydrogenase (SDH) activity. After collection of neonatal mouse ovaries, 45 ovaries were vitrified and the others (n = 45) were...

background: the utilization of immature oocytes derived from stimulated cycles could be of great importance, specially for urgent fertility preservation cases. the aim of the current study was to determine whether in-vitro maturation is more successful before or after the vitrification of these oocytes. materials and methods: the study was performed in a private ivf center. 318 germinal vesicle...

The present study was designed to evaluate the effect of activin-A during the in vitro oocyte maturation (IVM) and in vitro embryo culture (IVC) on nuclear maturation, blastocyst yield and blastocyst quality of prepubertal goat oocytes. In Experiment 1, three groups of oocytes were used during the IVM of prepubertal goat oocytes to determine the optimal concentration of recombinant human activi...

BACKGROUND The oocyte-to-embryo transition (OET) requires a co-ordinated transcriptional programme acting through evolutionarily conserved events, and transcription factors (TFs) are known to control these processes. Here, we focus on nuclear factor (NF)-κB, a TF involved in several cellular processes, studying NFκB-inhibitor (NFKBIA) mRNA and its protein product, IκBα, during OET. NFKBIA and I...

Normal oocyte maturation depends on signal transmission between granulosa cells and the oocyte. We have analysed the effects of inhibiting (I) cyclic AMP-dependent protein kinase (protein kinase A, PK-A), (II) Ca2+/phospholipid-dependent protein kinase (protein kinase C, PK-C) and (III) calmodulin (CaM) on pig oocyte maturation in vitro, protein synthesis and phosphorylation. The inhibition of ...

In Vitro Maturation (IVM) is a method that immature oocytes in antral follicles are extracted and matured in laboratry conditions. This review has attempted to provide the current knowledge and recent findings in in vitro maturation of oocytes and highlights the most important factors involved in this process. The review is based on literature reports and the author's experience. In IVM cycles,...

BACKGROUND In general, 15% of oocytes collected in ART cycles are immature. These oocytes may be cryopreserved further for use in in-vitro maturation (IVM) program. OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to determine maturation capacity, morphometric parameters and morphology of human immature oocytes in both fresh IVM (fIVM) and vitrified-IVM (vIVM) oocytes. MATERIALS AND METHODS 93 women who...

Porcine immature oocyte quality (i.e., that of live oocytes at the germinal vesicle stage) was evaluated according to features of the surrounding cumulus, aiming to establish maturational competence of different subpopulations of such cumulus-oocyte complexes. Six subpopulations were identified: A1 (with a dense cumulus), A2 (with a translucent cumulus), B1 (with the corona radiata), B2 (partly...