BACKGROUND: All-trans retinol is a biological antioxidantscavenging the ROS in the cell culture. OBJECTIVES: This studywas conducted to investigate the effect of all-trans retinol infertilization and culture medium on mouse embryo's developmentalcompetence. METHODS: This study was designed into twoexperiments. In the first experiment, in vitro mature oocytes wereco-cultured with sperm in fertil...

Background: Digital image processing and analysis are used for computer assisted evaluation of sperm morphology. Sperm head morphology has been identified as a characteristic that can be used to predict a male’s semen quality. On the other hand, zygote competence analysis is an importance tool to select embryo(s) for transfer. The aim of the present study is to determine zygote quality resulted...

Recent studies in higher plants or animals have shown that phospholipase D (PLD) signaling regulates many aspects of development, including organization of microtubules (MTs), actin and the endomembrane system. PLD hydrolyzes structural phospholipids to form the second messenger phosphatidic acid (PA). To begin to understand the signaling pathways and molecules that regulate cytoskeletal and en...

This paper presents allelic segregation data from a series of 16 crosses segregated for nuclear and chloroplast genes. By means of pedigree analysis, segregants of chloroplast markers occurring in the zygote have been distinguished from those occurring in zoospore clones. The genes ac1, ac2, and tm1 showed little if any deviation from 1:1 either in zygotic segregation or in zoospore clones. The...

Ooplasmic factors drive nuclear organization after fertilization and are also important for re-programming in nuclear transfer procedures, in which artificial activation is essential for reconstructed embryos to progress in development. The present research evaluated the effect of pronuclear transfer (PT) between zygotes parthenogenetically activated with ionomycin followed by strontium (S) or ...

Embryo transfer (ET) to recipient females is a foundational strategy for a number of assisted reproductive technologies, including cloning by somatic cell nuclear transfer. In an attempt to develop efficient ET in domestic ferrets, factors affecting development of transferred embryo were investigated. Unilateral and bilateral transfer of zygotes or blastocysts in the oviduct or uterus was evalu...

The oocyte's meiotic spindle is a dynamic structure that relies on microtubule organization and regulation by centrosomes. Disorganization of centrosomal proteins, including the nuclear mitotic apparatus (NuMA) protein and the molecular motor complex dynein/dynactin, can lead to chromosomal instability and developmental abnormalities. The present study reports the distribution and function of t...