A centrifugation procedure to enrich for enlarged cells has been used to isolate temperature-sensitive cdc mutants of the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Among these mutants are strains containing mutations that arrest proliferation at the regulatory step start. These new start mutations define two previously unidentified genes, CDC67 and CDC68, and reveal that a previously identified gene, DNA...

Diploid formation by haploid cells of Saccharomyces cerevisiae was tested during and after treatment with chemical agents which bring about arrest at the cell cycle regulatory step "start." All compounds, except sinefungin, allowed efficient mating. During sinefungin treatment, zygote formation, but not karyogamy, was affected.

Fertilization is the fundamental process in which two gametes - sperm and oocyte - fuse to generate a zygote that will form a new multicellular organism. In most vertebrates, oocytes await fertilization while arrested at metaphase of meiosis II. This resting state can be stable for many hours and depends on a cytoplasmic activity termed cytostatic factor (CSF). Recently, members of the novel Em...

BACKGROUND Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is one of the most common human malignancies in the world, and its prognosis is generally poor. Epigenetic alteration such as DNA methylation has been shown to be important in the development of human cancers including HCC. Here, we analyzed the methylation status of ZAR1, which has been reported to be aberrantly methylated in a few human cancers. MET...

The present study was done to uncover the possible beneficial and/or detrimental effect(s) of nano-micelle curcumin (NMC) on oocyte in-vitro maturation and pre-implantation embryo development. Forty-eight mature female Wistar rats were assigned to control, 7.5, 15, and 30 mg/kg-1 NMC-receiving (orally, for 48 days) groups. To assess the cumulus-oocyte complexes (COCs), the ovaries were stimulat...

Zygote arrest 1 (ZAR1) is a novel maternal-effect gene which is extremely important during the oocyte-to-embryo transition. Comprehensive methylation analysis of tumor-specific differentially methylated regions in human malignant melanoma has recently led to the identification of non-promoter hypermethylation of the ZAR1 gene that had never been previously linked to aberrant methylation. Striki...

The changes in epigenetic modifications during early embryonic development significantly impact mammalian genome activation (EGA) and are species-conserved to some degree. Here, we reanalyzed the published RNA-Seq of human, mouse, goat embryos found that Zfp296 (zinc finger protein 296) expression was higher at EGA stage than oocyte all three species (adjusted p-value < 0.05 |log2(foldchange...

The causes of embryonic arrest during pre-implantation development are poorly understood. Attempts to correlate patterns of oocyte gene expression with successful embryo development have been hampered by the lack of reliable and nondestructive predictors of viability at such an early stage. Here we report that zygote viscoelastic properties can predict blastocyst formation in humans and mice wi...

The discovery of arrestin-mediated biased signalling mechanisms for mammalian G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs) has revolutionized the field over the last decade. Now, with the recent demonstration of a role for α-arrestins in internalization of the yeast pheromone GPCR, Ste2p, the possibility of arrestin-mediated alternate GPCR functionalities in yeast also follows. Here, the effects of knoc...