In the morphological cytology the heterochromatin is one of very useful tools for the cell identification including the differentiation and maturation stage. However, the heterochromatin condensation state was less studied although it appeared to be different in “gene rich” central and “gene poor” peripheral nuclear regions. The heavy heterochromatin condensation state in the central “gene rich...

Primary cultures of fetal rat calvarial osteoblasts undergo a developmental sequence with respect to the temporal expression of genes encoding osteoblast phenotypic markers. Based on previous suggestions that gene-nuclear matrix associations are involved in regulating cell- and tissue-specific gene expression, we investigated the protein composition of the nuclear matrix during this development...

Background: Acyclovir is asynthetic purin nucleoside analog,which has been reported to be very effective against the treatment of herpes simplex and varicella zoster infections. Acyclovir is known to be toxic to gonads, but available literature fails to provide the indepth analyses of damage.The aim of the present study was to evaluate the effect of Acyclovir on DNA damage and nuclear maturatio...

Cyclophosphamide (CP) is one of the anti-neoplastic drugs. Despite its numerous clinical applications, it has devastating effects on the testicles and declines the sperm quality in treated patients. This study was aimed to investigate the protective effect of crocin in improving the toxicity induced by CP in reproductive system. In this study, 24 male adult mice (6 to 8 weeks) were randomly div...

Zeaxanthin is a common carotenoid, which is a powerful antioxidant that protects against damage caused by reactive oxygen species. The aim of the present study was to investigate the effects of zeaxanthin supplementation on in vitro maturation of porcine embryo development. We investigated nuclear maturation, intracellular glutathione (GSH), and reactive oxygen species (ROS) levels during in vi...

The role of estradiol-17beta on nuclear and cytoplasmic maturation of pig oocytes was investigated in the present study. To determine the estradiol effect, oocytes were cultured for 42 h in a steroid free medium composed of mTCM-199 supplemented with LH, FSH and 10% charcoal extracted follicular fluid. Estradiol receptor (ER), detected by a binding assay, were present in cumulus cells and oocyt...

The environment that the cumulus oocyte complex (COC) is exposed to during either in vivo or in vitro maturation (IVM) can have profound effects on the success of fertilisation and subsequent embryo development. Glucose is a pivotal metabolite for the COC and is metabolised by glycolysis, the pentose phosphate pathway (PPP), the hexosamine biosynthesis pathway (HBP) and the polyol pathway. Over...

Oocyte maturation is a final step of gamete development that follows a prolonged period of cell growth within a growing follicle. Unlike oocyte growth that takes several weeks or months, maturation process is a short (hours or days), dynamic process. The period of oocyte maturation varies among species, ranging from 10-13 hours in the mouse (Edwards & Gates, 1959) to 16-24 hours in the cow (Dom...

The addition of alpha-amanitin to extrafollicular, cumulus-enclosed ovine oocytes at explantation inhibits meiotic maturation and prevents many of the changes in protein synthesis that normally accompany maturation. By contrast, these inhibitory effects are considerably reduced by either delaying the addition of the drug for 1-4 h or by denuding the oocytes of all associated cumulus cells at th...