Intercellular bridges first appear during lizard oogenesis when follicles are rather small (150 microgram in diameter); at this stage they form connecting links between the oocyte and follicle cells, which have not yet differentiated into pyriform cells. Later on, when the follicles have become larger (1 mm) and the follicular epithelium appears constituted by 3 types of cells (small, intermedi...

Mitofusin-2 (Mfn2) is essential for embryonic development, anti-apoptotic events, protection against free radical-induced lesions, and mitochondrial fusion in many cells. However, little is known about its mechanism and function during oocyte maturation. In this study, we found that Mfn2 was expressed in the cytoplasm during different stages of mouse oocyte maturation. Mfn2 was mainly associate...

A study was made of the electrical and morphological changes in the sea-urchin oocyte during interaction with spermatozoa. The first event, a small step depolarization accompanied by a 20-40% decay in input resistance occurs within seconds of attachment. The evidence suggests that this electrical event is the result of sperm-oocyte fusion, and that the ion channels that lower the resistance acr...

Background: Development of cloned bovine embryos. Materials and Methods: Oocytes collection,oocyte denudation, oocyte enucleation, nuclear transfer, electrofusion, reconstructed embryo activation, culture of reconstructed and IVF embryo,and treatment with SAH post fusion interval Treatment of reconstructed embryos with TSA for 12 hours after activation, preparation of somatic donor cells, donor...

BACKGROUND The complexity of fertilization failure during assisted reproductive technologies (ART) is often under-appreciated, as this failure can occur at any number of essential mechanistic and cellular events. Importantly, successful fertilization is heavily dependent upon inherent qualities of the oocytes, and thus reliant upon fidelity of oocyte maturation. METHODS Pubmed and medline wer...

The salient phases of fertilization are gamete adhesion, membrane fusion, and internalization of the spermatozoon into the oocyte but the precise timeline and the molecular, membrane and cell mechanisms underlying these highly dynamical events are far from being established. The high motility of the spermatozoa and the unpredictable location of sperm/egg fusion dramatically hinder the use of re...

introduction: the value of embryonic stem-like cells in cloning is obvious. production of cloned animals can be achieved by introduction of these cells into a tetraploid embryo. tetraploid embryo is used as a feeder for development of embryonic stem-like cells and can be produced in vitro by electro-fusion of 2-cell embryos. the aim of this study was to ass,essthe effect of voltage alteration a...

In the present study, we propose an alternative technique called cytoplast fusion to improve the maturation rate and developmental competence of growing oocytes collected from early antral follicles in pigs. We examined whether the fusion of a growing oocyte with the cytoplast from a fully-grown oocyte (CFR group) could better promote maturation and developmental competence of the growing oocyt...