Reproduction Abstracts

Introduction: Recent studies have revealed the contribution of steroid hormones to in vitro growth of oocytes in different species. However, exactly how these steroid hormones support oocyte growth is not well understood. This study was conducted to examine the effect of various steroid hormones on in vitro growth of bovine oocytes and to determine the contribution of steroid hormones to oocyte growth by assessing the connections between oocytes and granulosa...

Protein modification with O-linked β-N-acetylglucosamine (O-GlcNAcylation) is essential for eukaryotic cells. There are many reports concerned with O-GlcNAcylateion, but little is known about it in preimplantation development. The objective of this study was to examine the presence of O-GlcNAcylation and the role of O-GlcNAc cycling in pig preimplantation development using parthenogenetic diploids. In-vitro matured ooc...

Introduction: The large, compact oocyte nucleoli, sometimes referred to as nucleolus precursor bodies (NPBs), are essential for embryonic development in mammals. It has been convincingly documented that zygotes inherit the oocyte nucleolar material and form NPBs again in pronuclei. During early embryonic development, the compact zygote NPBs gradually transform into reticulated nucleoli of somatic cells type. Here we show that zygote NPBs are not required for embryonic and full...