objective: silybum marianum has been used for centuries in herbal medicine for treatment of liver diseases. currently, there is no data available on the possible effects of silymarin on fetal development. this study aimed to investigate the teratogenic effect of silymarin on balb/c mice fetuses. materials and methods: a total of 40 pregnant mice were divided into 4 groups of 10 mice each. three...

aeromonas hydrophila secretes several extracellular proteins including enterotoxin, hemolysin and aerolysin that are associated with the bacterial virulence. previous studies have shown that two hemolytic toxins, hemolysin a and aerolysin a contribute to the virulence of aeromonas hydrophila. in the current study, a total of 50 strains of aeromonas hydrophila, including 28 (56%) strains isolate...

background: over the past several years, mammals have been successfully cloned by either the splitting of an early stage embryo or nuclear transfer of adult somatic cells (nt) into oocytes. although it has been 15 years since the generation of the first cloned mammals from somatic cells by nt, the success rate for producing live offspring by this technique is low regardless of the cell type and...

background: ovarian tissue transplantation is emerging technologies for fertility preservation. in addition, in vitro maturation (ivm) of oocytes retrieved from ovarian tissues may overcome the fertility defects in certain cases. objective: the aim was to evaluate the best site for ovarian tissue transplantation in mice. also, feasibility of ivm of oocytes retrieved from auto grafted ovarian ti...

background: the risk of multiple pregnancies often present in programs of in vitro fertilization (ivf) is an important force for embryo cryopreservation. on the other hand ethical restriction and assurance of potential fertility following chemo/radio therapy has led scientists to focus on female gamete preservation. objective: optimizing vitrification protocol by using less concentrated cryopro...

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...

despite the establishment of extensive and successful control programmes in some countries or regions, echinococcus granulosus still has a very wide geographical distribution. mature e. granulosus (n = 120) obtained from parasitology department, school of veterinary medicine, ferdowsi university of mashhad (iran). soluble protein of whole body of parasite was prepared by freeze-thawing in liqui...

abstract basement membrane of glomerular mesangium (bmg) is a thin membrane which helps to support the capillary loops in a renal glomerulus and type iv collagen is require for complete bm formation during glomerulogenesis. in this investigation specific antibody of type iv collagen has been used in light microscopy to study development of bmg of the embryonic and postnatal mouse glomerular mes...

background: in the field of mammalian embryo culture, the putative influence of autocrine/ paracrine factor(s), produce by the embryos itself, is under investigation. a smaller medium drop can prevent dilution of this factor(s). objective: the objective of this study was to examine the effect of culture medium volume on in vitro development of mouse 2-cell embryos. materials and methods: the em...

background: pentoxifylline (px) prevents camp breakdown by inhibiting the activity of the camp-phosphatase and presumably, stimulates sperm motion. incubation with px causes hyperactivation of sperm, an important step in achieving fertilization, and leads to changes in membranes associated with sperm capacitation. objective: the purpose of this study was to examine the effects of pentoxifylline...