Reproduction Abstracts

Measuring gene expression in individual cells is crucial for understanding the gene regulatory network controlling human embryonic development. Here we apply single-cell RNA sequencing (RNA-Seq) analysis to 124 individual cells from human preimplantation embryos and human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) at different passages. The number of maternally expressed genes detected in our data set is 22 687, including 8701 long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs), which represents a significant in...

The diagnosis of male fertility is of importance in humans and animals. Therefore several laboratory techniques have been developed for the evaluation of male fertility. Initial evaluation of male fertility generally depends upon semen analyses. While these tests provide valuable quantitative data, they yield no information concerning the functional competence of the spermatozoa.To cope with the weak points of conventional semen analyses, several tests r...

A common side-effect of standard cytotoxic cancer therapy is infertility and pre-mature menopause resulting from collateral damage sustained by the ovaries during treatment. The survival rates for many cancers has improved greatly during recent years and consequently there has been considerable interest in the development of new and innovative strategies to protect the fertility and health of women post-cancer treatment. Towards this end, we are investigating the cellular mech...