Reproduction Abstracts

Introduction: Reproductive ageing is associated with a reduced ovarian reserve and suppression of oocyte developmental competence (quality) as evidenced by increased meiotic segregation errors, epigenetic alterations and reduced fertilisation rates. Metabolic indicators of oocyte quality such as oocyte amino acid profile (AAP) and mitochondria DNA (mtDNA) copy number may provide insights into the mechanism of declining oocyte quality with age. This study investigated the effec...

Introduction: Genome-wide analysis of DNA methylation in mammalian preimplantation embryos, particularly at the single embryo level, will be of particular use for assessing the epigenetic status and health of in vitro-derived embryos, including humans. To date, single embryo DNA methylation analysis has been limited to a small number of genes (<5). In this study we used an adaptation of reduced representation bisulfite sequencing (RRBS) to i) perform genome-wide a...

Reproductive ageing in females is associated with reduced oocyte maturation potential and developmental competence. Oocyte chromatin configuration and metabolism, have recently been established as correlates of oocyte developmental competence in a number of species. Here, we have evaluated the effect of reproductive ageing on oocyte chromatin morphology and amino acid turnover in germinal vesicle (GV)-staged, ovine oocytes.Cumulus–oocyte complexes w...