developing a culture system for preantral follicles has important biotechnological implications due to the potential to produce a large number of oocytes for embryo production and transfer. to accomplish this goal, the present study was aimed to culture preantral follicles in the presence of different media, sera and fsh concentrations. six-week-old preantral follicles (95 ± 5 µm) were cultured...

BACKGROUND With improved prospects for the use of human oocyte in-vitro maturation in assisted reproductive technologies, the need to define more clearly the coordination of nuclear and cytoplasmic maturation has arisen. METHODS Immunofluorescence and confocal microscopy were used to evaluate cell cycle-dependent modifications in chromatin and microtubules in human germinal vesicle oocytes (n...

BACKGROUND Spermatogenesis culminates in production of one of the most highly differentiated cells in biology, the spermatozoon. The gametes that emerge from the testes are, however, functionally immature and only acquire full functionality once they have completed a process of post-testicular maturation in the epididymis and female reproductive tract. Remarkably, this acquisition of sperm func...

Virulent mycobacteria cause arrest of phagosome maturation as a part of their survival strategy in hosts. This process is mediated through multiple virulence factors, whose molecular nature remains elusive. Using Mycobacterium marinum as a model, we performed a genome-wide screen to identify mutants whose ability to inhibit phagosome maturation was impaired, and we succeeded in isolating a comp...

Burkholderia cenocepacia infects patients with cystic fibrosis. We have previously shown that B. cenocepacia can survive in macrophages within membrane vacuoles [B. cenocepacia-containing vacuoles (BcCVs)] that preclude fusion with the lysosome. The bacterial factors involved in B. cenocepacia intracellular survival are not fully elucidated. We report here that deletion of BCAM0628, encoding a ...

A specific inhibitor of RNA polymerase II, α-amanitin is broadly used to block transcriptional activities in cells. Previous studies showed that α-amanitin affects in vitro maturation of cumulus-oocyte-complex (COC). In this study, we evaluated the target of α-amanitin, and whether it affects oocytes or cumulus cells (CCs), or both. We treated α-amanitin with different time period during in vit...

Few in vivo studies had previously been attempted in reaffirming the in vitro data in current literature. This study evaluated the ability of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) isolated from bone marrow, periosteum and fat to treat partial growth arrest in immature New Zealand white (NZW) rabbits. A physeal arrest model in an immature rabbit was created. The bony bridge was excised 3 weeks later, an...

5-Lipoxygenase (5LO) is involved in the production of leukotrienes and reactive oxygen species (ROS) from arachidonic acid. Its strong activation has been associated with several diseases like cancer and neurodegeneration. Here we show that 5LO activity increases during senescence-like growth arrest induced by oncogenic ras or culture history in both human and mouse embryo fibroblasts. Overexpr...

p27(Kip1) is an inhibitor of cyclin-dependent kinases. It has been implicated as having a role in the induction of growth arrest at the G(1) phase of the cell cycle in response to anti-mitogenic signals such as cell contact and serum starvation. Proteasome-mediated degradation plays an important role in the rapid inactivation of p27(Kip1), causing quiescent cells to re-enter the cell cycle. Alt...

In sexually reproducing animals, oocytes arrest at diplotene or diakinesis and resume meiosis (meiotic maturation) in response to hormones. In Caenorhabditis elegans, major sperm protein triggers meiotic resumption through a mechanism involving somatic Gα(s)-adenylate cyclase signaling and soma-to-germline gap-junctional communication. Using genetic mosaic analysis, we show that the major effec...