Background Failure of Male Pronucleus (MPN) formation is a major concern in the success of Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection (ICSI) in some species. Despite the conducted unsuccessful efforts to improve ICSI efficiency in ovine, the present study was aimed to improve MPN formation and embryo development in ovine ICSI procedure through accompaniment of sperm pretreatment with co-injection of some...

BACKGROUND Sheep with prion protein (PrP) gene polymorphisms QQ171 and RQ171 were shown to be susceptible to the prion causing L-type bovine spongiform encephalopathy (L-BSE), although RQ171 sheep specifically propagated a distinctive prion molecular phenotype in their brains, characterized by a high molecular mass protease-resistant PrP fragment (HMM PrPres), distinct from L-BSE in QQ171 sheep...

Polymorphisms in ovine PrP at amino acid residues 141 and 154 are associated with susceptibility to ovine prion disease: Leu141Arg154 with classical scrapie and Phe141Arg154 and Leu141His154 with atypical scrapie. Classical scrapie is naturally transmissible between sheep, whereas this may not be the case with atypical scrapie. Critical amino acid residues will determine the range or stability ...

background: in vitro maturation (ivm) of oocytes is a promising technique to reduce the costs and avert the side-effects of gonadotropin stimulation for in vitro fertilization (ivf). the pregnancy rates from oocytes matured in vitro are much lower than those of in vivo stimulation cycles, indicating that optimization of ivm remains a challenge. objective: in this study, we investigated the effe...

background: in vitro maturation (ivm) is a promising treatment option for certain infertile women. nowadays, with the aid of polscope, it has become possible to evaluate zona pellucida (zp) characteristics as a parameter of oocyte quality. moreover, quality of oocytes can be influenced by many factors, such as patient’s age. the polscope system is a non-invasive technique to assess birefringent...

A mathematical model is used to study the dynamics of ovine brucellosis when transmitted directly from infected individual, through contact with a contaminated environment or vertically through mother to child. The model developed by Aïnseba et al. [A model for ovine brucellosis incorporating direct and indirect transmission, J. Biol. Dyn. 4 (2010), pp. 2-11. Available at http://www.math.u-bord...

background: the aim of this study was to investigate the effects of two vitrification protocols on mouse metaphase stage ii (mii) oocytes and evaluate their effects on the expression of heat shock protein a1a (hsp a1a) and mnsod genes. materials and methods: groups of approximately 15 oocytes without cumulus complexes were collected and vitrified with 10% (v/v) ethylene glycol (eg) + 10% (v/v) ...

BACKGROUND Activin A increases production of follicle stimulating hormone (FSH) by inducing transcription of its beta subunit (FSHB). This induction has been studied here in LbetaT2 gonadotropes using transient expression of ovine FSHBLuc (-4741 bp of ovine FSHB promoter plus exon/intron 1 linked to Luc). Several sequences between -169/-58 bp of the ovine FSHB proximal promoter are necessary fo...

Background: Fibroblast growth factors are a great family of growth factors that exert variety of functions in vertebrates including cell growth, survival, differentiation and migration. FGFRs are transmembrane tyrosine kinase receptors transmitting FGF signals. Four types of FGFRs (1/2/3/4) exist in vertebrates. FGF2 is one of the FGFs detected in bovine and ovine uterus flushes, supposing that...