Bioscientifica Proceedings

The formation of primordial follicles to establish a reservoir of resting follicles and the gradual depletion of that reservoir to provide a succession of growing follicles are key to female fertility, but little is known about the regulation of these early stages of follicular development. This review summarizes the efforts of our laboratory to elucidate these critical processes in cattle. Primordial follicles first appear in fetal ovaries around the end of the first trimeste...

Somatic cell nuclear transfer (cloning) returns a differentiated cell to a totipotent status; a process termed nuclear reprogramming. Nuclear transfer has potential applications in agriculture and biomedicine, but is limited by low efficiency. To understand the deficiencies of nuclear reprogramming, our research has focused on both candidate genes (imprinted and X-linked genes) and global gene expression patterns in cloned bovine embryos/offspring as compared to those generate...