Trans-generational antibody transfer constitutes an important mechanism by which mothers may enhance offspring resistance to pathogens. Thus, differential antibody deposition may potentially allow a female to differentiate offspring performance. Here, we examined whether maternal immunization with sheep red blood cells (SRBC) prior to egg laying affects sex-specific yolk antibody transfer and s...

Pregnancies at high-altitudes are influenced by hypoxia and oxidative stress and frequently affected by IUGR. However, a common thought is that early pregnant women visiting altitude have no major complications for gestation development, since IUGR is developed during the second half of pregnancy. Thus, using a well-characterized sheep-model, we aimed to determine whether long- and/or short-ter...

BACKGROUND Ammonium is produced in culture medium due to amino acids degradation and has adverse effect on in vitro culture of embryo. In the current study, the purpose was to evaluate the effects of ammuniom chloride (AC) on in vitro oocyte maturation rate and early embryo development in the sheep and its effect on the expression of Bcl-2. METHODS In vitro maturation (IVM) was performed in t...

At different developmental stages, candidate human hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) are present within the CD34+ CD38- population. By means of xenotransplantation, such CD34+CD38- cells were recently shown to engraft the hematopoietic system of fetal sheep and nonobese diabetic severe combined immunodeficient adult mice. Here it is demonstrated that, after their injection into murine blastocysts...

Differential display technology applied to rabbit blastocysts identified an mRNA that encodes a motif similar to that of the proteolipid protein PLP2/A4 of man, mouse and sheep. The open reading frame (456bp) has 88% amino acid identity to human PLP2/A4. The gene is maximally expressed at the beginning of gastrulation: in situ hybridizations exhibited a sickle-shaped area of labelling at the po...

A crane herpesvirus (CrHV) grown in chicken embryo fibroblast (CEF) cells was tested for hemagglutination (HA) with erythrocytes from a variety of species at 4 degrees C, room temperature and 37 degrees C. HA was observed at all temperatures with erythrocytes from mouse, ddY and BALB/c strains, but not with those from cattle, sheep and chicken. Mice, ddY strain, showed an individual variation i...

Physical removal of mammalian cumulus-oocyte complexes (COCs) from ovarian follicles results in spontaneous resumption of meiosis, largely because of a decrease in cAMP concentrations, causing asynchrony between cytoplasmic and nuclear maturation and decreased oocyte developmental competence. The aim of this study was to modulate cAMP concentrations within ovine COCs to delay spontaneous nuclea...

Ram spermatozoa are most susceptible to damage during freezing between the temperatures of -10 degrees C and -25 degrees C. The objectives of the present study were to examine how freezing rate through this critical temperature zone affected the fertility of spermatozoa as assessed in vivo and in vitro. Semen from six adult rams was frozen at two different rates ("fast": 5 degrees C/min from +5...

The aim of this study was to assess the effects of melatonin on the in vitro maturation and fertilization of sheep oocytes, and on the in vitro culture of the embryos. Oocytes from sheep ovaries collected at the slaughterhouse were divided into four groups, two of which were treated with either 10 M (M5) or 10 M (M6) melatonin, while the other two groups served as untreated controls (C5 and C6)...

were generated in Madison, Wisconsin, by Thompson’s group in 1998 (99). In contrast, murine ESC were isolated and initially described in the 1980s (27, 83) and have been used in many different models ever since, paving the way for current studies on hESC. The promise generated by the possible application of hESC to disease treatment has led to a tremendous interest in stem cell research overall...