Chromosome aneuploidy, an abnormal number of chromosomes, in human gametes and embryos is a major cause of IVF failure and miscarriage and can result in affected live births. To avoid these outcomes and improve implantation and live birth rates, preimplantation genetic screening aims to identify euploid embryos before transfer but has been restricted to analysis of a limited number of chromosom...

The impact of unmonitored contaminants, also known as contaminants of emerging concern (CECs), on freshwater streams remains largely uncharacterized. Water samples from 31 streams representing urban, agricultural and undeveloped (i.e., open space) land use in Southern California (USA) were analyzed for in vitro and in vivo bioactivity. The extent and magnitude of bioactivity screened using endo...

BACKGROUND The aim of this retrospective study was to assess the value of maternal history and ultrasound scan findings at 6-10 weeks for predicting early miscarriage. METHODS Embryonic crown-rump length (CRL), heart rate (HR), gestational sac diameter (GSD) and yolk sac diameter (YSD) were compared in two groups of women with singleton pregnancies attending an early pregnancy unit. In the fi...

Hatching failure is a surprisingly common phenomenon given that natural selection constantly works against it. In birds, an average of about 10 per cent of eggs across species fail to hatch, often owing to the death of embryos. While embryo mortality owing to inbreeding is both well-documented and evolutionarily plausible, this is not true for other sources of mortality. In fact, the basis for ...

Re-epithelization and the formation of a granulation tissue consisting of in ̄ammatory cells, newly formed blood vessels, and ®broblasts embedded in a loose collagenous extracellular matrix, are critical events occurring during wound healing. In this study, utilizing the chick embryo chorioallantoic membrane (CAM) as an in vivo model of wound healing, we investigated the role of endogenous and e...

Preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) was • fi rst applied in 1988 using a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) protocol to amplify a sequence on the Y chromosome for embryo sexing for patients carrying X-linked disease. Patients have to go through in vitro • fertilization (IVF) so that their embryos may be generated in vitro. Cells are removed from oocytes or embryos and used for the genetic diag...

Background: Zinc accumulates in the embryo, aleurone, and subaleurone layers at different amounts in cereal grains. Our hypothesis is that zinc could be stored bound, not only to low MW metabolites/proteins, but also to high MW proteins as well. Methods: In order to identify the most abundant zinc binding proteins in different grain tissues, we microdissected barley grains into (1) seed coats; ...

During a process of differential display screening for lithium-responsive mRNA in Xenopus embryos, we found a maternal transcript which is remarkably reduced by lithium. The isolated cDNA, designated Xoom, encoded a novel oocyte membrane protein with a signal sequence in the N-terminus and a single transmembrane domain. The extracellular domain contained a cysteine-rich region and a serine/thre...

We previously reported the purification of a protein from Drosophila embryo extracts that carries out the strand transfer step in homologous recombination (Lowenhaupt, K., Sander, M., Hauser, C. and A. Rich, 1989, J. Biol. Chem. 264, 20568). We report here the isolation of the gene encoding this protein. Partial amino acid sequence from a tryptic digest of gel purified strand transfer protein w...

Over the last few years the field of pluripotent stem cell research has witnessed a robust paradigm shift from regenerative medicine towards drug screening. ESC has emerged as an attractive model in the pharmaceutical industry for in vitro screening of compounds due to their enormous potential in facilitating drug discovery programs. These cells are advantageous over primary or immortalized cel...