Background: The success of in vitro-fertilization (IVF) cycles is determined large part by the quality embryo cleavage, which turn, dependent on culture media (CM). Many factors can influence CM, one levels Cell Free Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). Understanding association between Cell-free DNA CM and cleavage could help improve IVF techniques.
 Methods: This prospective study was conducted ...

Recently, we demonstrated chromosome instability (CIN) in human cleavage stage embryogenesis following in vitro fertilization (IVF). CIN not necessarily undermines normal human development (i.e. when remaining normal diploid blastomeres develop the embryo proper), however it can spark a spectrum of conditions, including loss of conception, genetic disease and genetic variation development. To s...

A colorimetric assay of sequence-specific DNA cleavage by bleomycin (BLM) derivatives is a promising methodology for facilitating the development DNA-associated drugs with antitumor activity. Double-stranded DNA-functionalized gold nanoparticles (dsDNA-AuNPs) possessing BLM-mediated sites were designed. The front cover highlights non-fluorescence-based analytical method that allows visual scree...

We developed several novel tools to genome wide screen for CNVs and SNPs in single cells. When applied to cleavage stage embryos from young fertile couples we discovered, unexpectedly, an extremely high incidence of chromosomal instability, a hallmark of tumorigenesis (Vanneste et al., Nature Medicine, 2009; Vanneste et al., Hum.Reprod., 2011). Not only mosaicisms for whole chromosome aneuploid...

DNA can be concatenated by hybridization of DNA fragments with protruding single-stranded termini. DNA cleavage occurring at a nucleotide containing a DNA base analogue is a useful method to obtain DNA with designed protruding termini. Here, we report a novel non-enzymatic DNA cleavage reaction for DNA concatenation. We found that DNA is cleaved at a nucleotide containing 5-ethynyluracil in a m...

Activation-induced cytidine deaminase is required for the DNA cleavage step of Ig class switch recombination (CSR). However, its molecular mechanism is controversial. RNA-editing hypothesis postulates that activation-induced cytidine deaminase deaminates cytosine in an unknown mRNA to generate a new mRNA encoding an endonuclease for CSR and thus predicts that DNA cleavage depends on de novo pro...