In this study, certain enzymes in ram semen involved in reactive oxygen species elimination and their changes during the cryopreservation process were characterized in order to investigate the hypothesis that the antioxidant defense system is involved in the maintenance of frozen sperm quality. Glutathione reductase (GR), glutathione peroxidase (GPx), and superoxide dismutase (SOD) activities w...

Recent developments in optical coherence tomography (OCT) systems for the cornea have limited resolution or acquisition speed. In this study we aim to evaluate the use of a 'micro-OCT' (μOCT ~1 μm axial resolution) compared to existing imaging modalities using animal models of corneal endothelial disease. We used established cryoinjury and bullous keratopathy models in Sprague Dawley rats compa...

Cryopreserved cells and tissues are increasingly used for stem cell transplantation and tissue engineering. However, their freezing, storage, and thawing is associated with severe damage, suggesting the need for better cryopreservation methods. Here, we show that activation of caspase-3 is induced during the freeze-thaw process. Moreover, we demonstrate that prevention of caspase activation by ...

INTRODUCTION MRL is a strain of mice with the unusual ability to recover from injuries without forming scar tissue. It was recently reported that the MRL mice can recover with little or no scar formation following a cryogenically induced myocardial infarction of the right ventricle. These findings suggest that scarless recovery from myocardial injury is possible in mammalian ventricles. If appl...

HARRIS et al.1), observing ultrastructural changes in rapidly frozen fowl spermatozoa, noted destructive effects on the acrosome, the midpiece, and the cytoplasmic membrane. Similar ultrastructural damages were seen by BAKST and SEXTON2) in frozen-thawed fowl and turkey spermatozoa under transmission and scanning electron microscopes. However, they gave little information on the possible mechan...

Principle of oocyte cryoinjury is first overviewed and then research history of cryopreservation using bovine oocytes is summarized for the last two decades with a few special references to recent progresses. Various types of cryodevices have been developed to accelerate the cooling rate and applied to the oocytes from large domestic species enriched with cytoplasmic lipid droplets. Two recent ...

Mammals respond to a myocardial infarction by irreversible scar formation. By contrast, zebrafish are able to resolve the scar and to regenerate functional cardiac muscle. It is not known how opposing cellular responses of fibrosis and new myocardium formation are spatially and temporally coordinated during heart regeneration in zebrafish. Here, we report that the balance between the reparative...

Zebrafish heart regeneration depends on cardiac cell proliferation, epicardium activation and transient reparative tissue deposition. The contribution and the regulation of specific collagen types during the regenerative process, however, remain poorly characterized. Here, we identified that the non-fibrillar type XII collagen, which serves as a matrix-bridging component, is expressed in the ep...