Bioscientifica Proceedings

Among livestock species, swine exhibit the most severe naturally-occurring intra-uterine growth restriction (IUGR) primarily due to a reduction in net protein synthesis. Thus, new knowledge about fetal metabolism of amino acids (AA), which are building blocks for proteins and regulators of intracellular protein turnover, can provide a solution to this problem. Among all AA, requirements of glutamate and glutamine by fetal pigs are quantitatively the highest, but cannot b...

Conceptus development in mammals depends on an intra-uterine environment filled with histotroph that includes molecules that are secreted by uterine epithelia and/or selectively transported into the uterine lumen. In pigs, total recoverable glucose, fructose, arginine, leucine and glutamine increase in histotroph with advancing days of the peri-implantation period of pregnancy and in allantoic fluid later in gestation. During pregnancy, the uterine luminal epithelium (LE...

This review highlights information on conceptus-uterus interactions in the pig with respect to uterine gene expression in response to estrogens and interferons (IF Ns) secreted from elongating conceptuses. Pig conceptuses release estrogens for pregnancy recognition, but also secrete IENs that do not appear to be antiluteolytic. Estrogens and IFNs induce expression of largely non-overlapping sets of genes, and evidence suggests that pig conceptuses orchestrate essential e...

Abstract unavailable© 2009 Society for Reproduction and Fertility...