Background: Heat shock may affect different aspects of oocyte maturation and its subsequent development to the blastocyst stage. A series of in vitro experiments was performed to determine whether physiologically heat shock (41°C) disrupts the progression of the ovine oocytes through meiosis, activation and blastocyst formation. Materials and Methods: The cumulus-oocyte complexes (COCs) were as...

Oocyte maturation and embryo development are controlled by intra-ovarian factors such as steroid hormones. Progesterone (P4) exists in the follicular fluid that contributes to normal mammalian ovarian function and has several critical functions during embryo development and implantation, including endometrial receptivity, embryonic survival during gestation and transformation of the endometrial...

In order to achieve developmental competence, porcine oocytes must undergo both nuclear and cytoplasmic maturation. Nuclear maturation results from breakdown of the germinal vesicle (GV) and progression of meiosis to metaphase II (MII). Cytoplasmic maturation is the accumulation, within the oocyte’s cytoplasm, of products necessary for fertilization, cleavage and development, prior to activatio...

introduction: standard concentrations of antibiotics in culture media are thought to have no detectable toxic effects on the cultured cells. since antibiotics are biologically active substances, the possibility that they interfere to some extent with cellular processes occurring in the cultured cells can not always be totally excluded. this study, therefore, was conducted to assess whether the ...