Reproduction Abstracts

Introduction: SPRASA is a protein, that is expressed in the acrosome of sperm, as wel as on the oolemma of many mammals, which we identified as the target of antisperm antibodies from some infertile men. In order to further understand the importance of SPRASA we produced knockout mice and examined the effect of this gene knockout on murine fertility.Methods: With ethics approval (AEC_R811) knockout mice were generated lacking the expression of exons 4 an...

Introduction: The human placenta continuously extrudes, into the maternal circulation, vast quantities of extracellular vesicles (EVs) which have the ability to alter maternal physiology. There are three sizes of placental EVs multinucleated macro-EVs, subcellular micro- and nano- EVs. Macro-EVs are trapped in the maternal lungs due to their large size. We investigated the organs with which micro- and nano- EVs interact in vivo and their potential effects EVs on vascular funct...