objective(s): sertoli cells support in vivo germ cell production; but, its exact mechanism has not been well understood. the present study was designed to analyze the effect of sertoli cells in differentiation of mouse embryonic stem cells (mescs) to germ cells.   materials and methods: a fusion construct composed of a stra8 gene promoter and the coding region of enhanced green fluorescence pro...

  Objective(s): Sertoli cells support in vivo germ cell production; but, its exact mechanism has not been well understood. The present study was designed to analyze the effect of Sertoli cells in differentiation of mouse embryonic stem cells (mESCs) to germ cells.   Materials and Methods: A fusion construct composed of a Stra8 gene promoter and the coding region of enhanced green fluorescence p...

Background: Infertility is increasingly recognized as a major health problem. Meiotic genes are very important candidates for genes contributing to female and male infertility. Mammalian MutL homologues have dual roles in DNA mismatch repair (MMR) after replication errors and meiotic reciprocal recombination. There are four MutL homologues in eukaryotes that mutations of three of them (Mlh1, Ml...

In S. pombe, about 5% of genes are meiosis-specific and accumulate little or no mRNA during vegetative growth. Here we use Affymetrix tiling arrays to characterize transcripts in vegetative and meiotic cells. In vegetative cells, many meiotic genes, especially those induced in mid-meiosis, have abundant antisense transcripts. Disruption of the antisense transcription of three of these mid-meiot...

Coprinopsis cinerea (also known as Coprinus cinereus) is a multicellular basidiomycete mushroom particularly suited to the study of meiosis due to its synchronous meiotic development and prolonged prophase. We examined the 15-hour meiotic transcriptional program of C. cinerea, encompassing time points prior to haploid nuclear fusion though tetrad formation, using a 70-mer oligonucleotide microa...

Meiosis is a defining feature of eukaryotes but its phylogenetic distribution has not been broadly determined, especially among eukaryotic microorganisms (i.e. protists)-which represent the majority of eukaryotic 'supergroups'. We surveyed genomes of animals, fungi, plants and protists for meiotic genes, focusing on the evolutionarily divergent parasitic protist Trichomonas vaginalis. We identi...

Meiotic exchange occurs preferentially between homologous chromatids, in contrast to mitotic recombination, which occurs primarily between sister chromatids. To identify functions that direct meiotic recombination events to homologues, we screened for mutants exhibiting an increase in meiotic unequal sister-chromatid recombination (SCR). The msc (meiotic sister-chromatid recombination) mutants ...

It has been established that meiotic recombination and chromosome segregation are inhibited when meiotic DNA replication is blocked. Here we demonstrate that early meiotic gene (EMG) expression is also inhibited by a block in replication. Since early meiotic genes are required to promote meiotic recombination and DNA division, the low expression of these genes may contribute to the block in mei...

H uman infertility is a major worldwide health problem for individuals and their partners (1). Because genetic defects are thought to underlie many of the unexplained pathologies in infertility cases, animal models are expected to provide valuable clues to the underlying defects. More than 200 infertile or subfertile genetic mouse models have already been generated, defining key DNA repair and ...