In mammals, the primordial follicle pool represents the entire reproductive potential of a female. The transforming growth factor-β (TGF-β) family member activin (ACT) contributes to folliculogenesis, although the exact mechanism is not known. The role of FST288, the strongest ACT-neutralizing isoform of follistatin (FST), during cyst breakdown and primordial follicle formation in the fetal mic...

BACKGROUND Normal development of reproductive organs is crucial for successful reproduction. In mice the early ovarian developmental process occurs during the embryonic and postnatal period and is regulated through a series of molecular signaling events. Early ovarian development in mice is a seventeen-day process that begins with the rise of six primordial germ cells on embryonic day five (E5)...

The peptidyl-prolyl isomerase Pin1 is proposed to have diverse functions in many vital aspects of the cell. Despite the multitude of proteins targeted by Pin1 and the proposed regulatory role it plays in critical cellular functions, Pin1 is an essential gene in some eukaryotic organisms, but is dispensable in metazoans. In two genetic models, Candida albicans and Drosophila melanogaster, Pin1 p...

Ovarian germ cell survival is dependent upon the formation of primordial follicles, which occurs during fetal life in the human. Activin contributes to germ cell proliferation and survival at this time. SMADs2 and 3 are central elements in the activin signalling pathway and thus indicate sites of activin action. We have investigated the expression and localisation of SMADs2 and 3 in the fetal o...

The four small micromeres of the sea urchin embryo contribute only to the coelomic sacs, which produce major components of the adult body plan during postembryonic development. To test the proposition that the small micromeres are the definitive primordial germ cell lineage of the sea urchin, we deleted their 4th cleavage parents, and raised the deleted embryos through larval life and metamorph...

objective(s): the present day challenge is how to obtain germ cells from stem cells to treat patients with cancer and infertility. much more efforts have been made to develop a procedure for attaining germ cells in vitro. recently, human umbilical cord-derived mesenchymal stem cells (humscs) have been introduced with higher efficacy for differentiation. in this work, we tried to explore the eff...

Approximately 20-25 primordial germ cells leave the endoderm between stages 38-41 and localize in the dorsal root of the mesentery by stage 43/44. At this time all the cells contain large quantities of yolk which is gradually resorbed. The cells begin dividing between stages 48-52. The number and size of the germ cells were measured in tadpoles between stages 48-54 of development. The results i...

Genes belonging to the piwi family are required for stem cell self-renewal in diverse organisms. We cloned mouse homologues of piwi by RT-PCR using degenerative primers. The deduced amino acid sequences of mouse homologues MIWI and MILI showed that each contains a well-conserved C-terminal PIWI domain and that each shares significant homology with PIWI and their human counterparts HIWI. Both mi...