Background: The pregnancy rates from oocytes matured in vitro are much lower than those of in vivo stimulation cycles, indicating that optimization of IVM remains a challenge. Reduced developmental competence of oocytes matured in vitro indicates that current culture systems for oocytes maturation do not adequately support nuclear and/or cytoplasmic maturation. Therefore in this study, we evalu...

mice are ideal models for icsi experiments because of the ease of culturing eggs/embryos in vitro and the availability of ample genetic information. unfortunately, it has been extremely difficult. in this study we improved the mouse icsi method by using a new holding pipette that was made of two pipettes such that one pipette was pulled and heat merged into the other one. the outer pipette had ...

OBJECTIVE This study was aimed to determine the effects of n-hexane on the maturation of mouse oocytes. METHODS Cell culture was used to observe the maturation of mouse oocytes and CLSM was employed to determine their apoptosis. RESULTS Germinal vesicle breakdown (GVBD) and extrusion of the first polar body in mouse oocytes were significantly inhibited by n-hexane. After fertilization, the ...

background: mammalian oocytes are exposed to a mixture of many different growth factors and cytokines which provides an optimized microenvironment for oocyte maturation. in the lack of this natural microenvironment in vitro the quality of oocyte and embryos appears to be suboptimal. objective: this study was undertaken to investigate the effects of egf and lif on in vitro maturation fertilizati...

Background When gonadal sex reversal occurs in mammalian species, the resultant XX males and XY females become infertile or subfertile, suggesting critical roles of sex chromosomes in germ cell differentiation. The objective of our study is to clarify the mechanism of infertility in the B6.YTIR (XY) sex-reversed female mouse, which can be attributed to a failure in the second meiotic division i...

Background: Cryopreservation of oocytes, which is an interesting procedure to conserve female gametes, is an essential part of reproductive biotechnology. The objective of the present study was to investigate the effects of cumulus cells on survival,in vitro maturation,fertilization and subsequent developmental capacity of mouse germinal vesicle stage oocytes during vitrification. Materials and...

background: the aim of this study was to investigate the effects of two vitrification protocols on mouse metaphase stage ii (mii) oocytes and evaluate their effects on the expression of heat shock protein a1a (hsp a1a) and mnsod genes. materials and methods: groups of approximately 15 oocytes without cumulus complexes were collected and vitrified with 10% (v/v) ethylene glycol (eg) + 10% (v/v) ...

Cytoplasmic extracts of meiotically mature mouse oocytes were injected into immature Xenopus laevis oocytes, which underwent germinal vesicle breakdown within 2 h. Germinal vesicle breakdown was not inhibited by incubation of the Xenopus oocytes in cycloheximide (20 micrograms/ml). Identically prepared extracts of meiotically immature mouse oocytes, arrested at the germinal vesicle stage by dib...