A great deal of evolutionary conservation has been found in the control of oocyte development, from invertebrates to women. However, little is known of mechanisms that control oocyte loss over time. Oocyte loss is often assumed to be a result of oocyte-intrinsic deficiencies or damage. In fruit flies, starvation results in halted oocyte production by germline stem cells and induces oocyte loss ...

Folliculogenesis is a progressive and highly regulated process, which is essential to provide ova for later reproductive life, requires the bidirectional communication between the oocyte and granulosa cells. This physical connection-mediated communication conveys not only the signals from the oocyte to granulosa cells that regulate their proliferation but also metabolites from the granulosa cel...

The anterior-posterior axis of Drosophila is established before fertilisation when the oocyte becomes polarised to direct the localisation of bicoid and oskar mRNAs to opposite poles of the egg. Here we review recent results that reveal that the oocyte acquires polarity much earlier than previously thought, at the time when it acquires its fate. The oocyte arises from a 16-cell germline cyst, a...

Oocytes and their companion somatic cells maintain a close association throughout oogenesis and this association is essential for normal oocyte and follicular developmenL This review summarizes current concepts of the role of the somatic cells in the regulation of mammalian oocyte growth, the maintenance of meiotic arrest, the induction of oocyte maturation, and the acquisition of full embryoni...

Ultrastructural studies of oocyte degeneration in the oocyte, and the functions of follicle cells during oocyte degeneration are described to clarify the reproductive mechanism on oocyte degeneration of Mactra chinensis using cytological methods. Commonly, the follicle cells are attached to the oocyte. Follicle cells play an important role in oocyte degeneration. In particular, the functions of...

Efforts have intensified to successfully mature and inseminate oocytes in vitro and then culture ensuing embryos to transferable stages from a large number of mammalian species. Success varies, but generally even for the most successful species it is only possible to obtain a maximum of a 40 to 50% development of zygotes to the blastocyst stage. Reduced oocyte developmental competence is sugges...

INTRODUCTION Today, oocyte donation has become well established, giving rise to thousands of children born worldwide annually. The introduction of oocyte cryopreservation through vitrification allows the introduction of egg banking, improving the efficiency and comfort of oocyte donation. Moreover, the vitrification technique can now enable autologous donation of oocytes to prevent future infer...

Oocyte quality in pigs is defined as the potential of that oocyte to develop into a viable offspring. There is increasing evidence that the programming of the oocyte must be completed before leaving the ovarian follicle, including both nuclear and cytoplasmic maturation. Pig oocytes matured in vitro under basic conditions are deficient in some, as yet unidentified, cytoplasmic factors and thus ...

The aim of this study was to investigate 2 quantification criteria to evaluate the developmental condition of follicles cohort and clarify their impacts upon the determining of human chorionic gonadotropin trigger timing and the reproductive outcome: the proportion of mature follicles in growing follicles cohort on the day of human chorionic gonadotropin trigger and the peak estradiol level per...

The maturation of an oocyte into an egg is a key step in preparation for fertilization. In Xenopus, oocyte maturation is independent of transcription, being regulated at the level of translation and post-translational modifications of proteins. To identify factors involved in the maturation process we used two-dimensional differential gel electrophoresis to compare the proteome of oocytes and e...