Climatically important low-level clouds are commonly misrepresented in climate models. The FAst-physics System TEstbed and Research (FASTER) Project has constructed case studies from the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Climate Research Facility’s Southern Great Plain site during the RACORO aircraft campaign to facilitate research on model representation of boundary-layer clouds. This paper fo...

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...

The enhanced cumulus convection in tropical disturbances acts in two opposing ways. In one sense the condensation heat from the cumulus acts to warm the inner portions of the disturbance and induce vertical shear of the horizontal wind through the thermal wind relationship. In the opposite sense the cumulus also act to suppress vertical wind shear by transfer of horizontal momentum within their...

BACKGROUND Cryopreservation has limited successes and in-vitro maturation is used to improve its results. Hydrostatic pressure (HP) plays an important role in follicular development. OBJECTIVE This study was designed to examine the effects of HP on in-vitro maturation of oocytes and cell death in cumulus cells derived from vitrified-warmed mouse ovaries. MATERIALS AND METHODS Preovulatory f...

Intracellular communication between the cumulus cell complex and the oocyte is essential for numerous processes during oocyte maturation. The aim of this study was to determine the interaction between oocyte-secreted factors and the metabolic activity of bovine cumulus cell complexes during in vitro maturation (IVM). Cumulus-oocyte complexes (COCs) were aspirated from ovaries derived from an ab...

A morphological classification of the immature cumulus-oocyte complex (COC), which grossly resembled the atresia grade of its follicle source, was used in bovine oocytes to determine 1) the developmental potential by either in vitro fertilization or parthenogenetic activation, 2) the calcium current activity by whole-cell voltage clamp technique, and 3) the intracytoplasmic calcium stores by mi...

MicroRNA-378 regulates oocyte maturation via the suppression of aromatase in porcine 1 cumulus cells 2 Bo Pan, Derek Toms, Wei Shen, Julang Li 3 Department of Animal and Poultry Science, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario 4 Laboratory of Germ Cell Biology, College of Animal Science and Technology, Qingdao 5 Agricultural University, Qingdao, China 6 7 Abbreviated title: Cumulus cell miR-378 i...

Serum and follicular fluid zinc concentrations were investigated in patients undergoing assisted reproductive treatment. No correlation was found between zinc and oestradiol concentrations in serum. At the time of oocyte retrieval, zinc concentrations in follicular fluid were significantly lower than serum concentrations (P<0.0001). The expression of the two families of zinc transporters, ZnT a...

Prostaglandins (PGs) have long been known to play roles in various processes of female reproduction; however, the molecular mechanisms therein remained unsolved until recently. This review summarizes the recent progress towards understanding the molecular mechanisms underlying PG actions in fertilization and parturition. A series of studies using EP2-deficient mice demonstrated that after ovula...

Pluripotent stem cells are possibly the best candidates for regenerative medicine, and somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) is one of the viable options to make patient-specific embryonic stem cells. Till date efficacy of SCNT embryos is very low and requires further improvement like ideal oocyte activation and in vitro culture system. The aim of the present study was to evaluate ideal oocyte a...