Abstract With the development of society, there has been a significant delay in female fertility and an increasing desire for childbearing among females advanced maternal age recent decades. Nevertheless, women over 35 years old have more risk infertility miscarriage compared to young women, due decreased oocyte quality. These changes are mainly caused by meiotic defects, especially aneuploidy....

The use of somatic cells to generate induced-pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), which have gene characteristic resembling those of human embryonic stem cells (hESCs), has opened up a new avenue to produce patient-specific stem cells for regenerative medicine. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) have gained much attention over the past few years due to their pivotal role in many biological activites, including meta...

Reprogramming to pluripotency after overexpression of OCT4, SOX2, KLF4, and MYC is accompanied by global genomic and epigenomic changes. Histone modification and DNA methylation states in induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) have been shown to be highly similar to embryonic stem cells (ESCs). However, epigenetic differences still exist between iPSCs and ESCs. In particular, aberrant DNA methy...

Direct reprogramming of non-neuronal cells to generate new neurons is a promising approach to repair damaged brains. Impact of the in vivo environment on neuronal reprogramming, however, is poorly understood. Here we show that regional differences and injury conditions have significant influence on the efficacy of reprogramming and subsequent survival of the newly generated neurons in the adult...

Axis specification during Drosophila embryonic development requires transfer of maternal components during oogenesis from nurse cells (NCs) into the oocyte through cytoplasmic bridges. We found that the asymmetrical distribution of Golgi, between nurse cells and the oocyte, is sustained by an active transport process. We have characterized actin basket structures that asymmetrically cap the NC ...

Imbalances in endoplasmic reticulum (ER) proteostasis are associated with etiologically-diverse degenerative diseases linked to excessive extracellular protein misfolding and aggregation. Reprogramming of the ER proteostasis environment through genetic activation of the Unfolded Protein Response (UPR)-associated transcription factor ATF6 attenuates secretion and extracellular aggregation of amy...

BACKGROUND Oocyte maturation and subsequent in vitro production (IVP) of embryos are affected by diverse groups of chemicals in maturation medium which are needed for successful mammalian oocyte maturation during which the dramatic cytoplasmic and nuclear reprogramming events take place. This study was designed to evaluate the effects of protein source (fetal bovine serum, FBS, and bovine serum...

Recent studies have suggested that disomic oocyte-mediated uniparental disomy 15 (UPD(15)mat) is increased in patients with Prader-Willi syndrome (PWS) born after medically assisted reproduction (MAR). However, it remains unknown whether the increase is primarily due to MAR procedure itself or advanced maternal childbearing ages as a predisposing factor for the disomic oocyte production. To exa...

Molecular insights into somatic cell reprogramming to induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS) would aid regenerative medicine, but are difficult to elucidate in iPS because of their heterogeneity, as relatively few cells undergo reprogramming (0.1–1%; refs 1,2). To identify early acting regulators, we capitalized on non-dividing heterokaryons (mouse embryonic stem cells fused to human fibroblasts)...

Differentiated cells can be reprogrammed to the pluripotent state by overexpression of defined factors, and this process is profoundly influenced by epigenetic mechanisms including dynamic histone modifications. Changes in H3K4 methylation have been shown to be the predominant activating response in the early stage of cellular reprogramming. Mechanisms underlying such epigenetic priming, howeve...