Reproduction Abstracts

Introduction: In 1986, typical borine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) was found in UK. Cattle were orally given abnormal prion protein in the brain of sheep with Scrapie. Orally administered abnormal prion protein causes variant type Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease infection in human. In 2003, spontaneous BSE was found in many countries. Spontaneous BSE is transmissible from cattle to monkey. In 2012, United States Department of Agriculture reported that spontaneous BSE cow was foun...

Introduction: During follicular development in mammalian ovaries, the majority of follicles undergo atresia. One of the characteristics of this process is apoptotic cell death in granulosa cells. Death ligands and receptors, including Fas ligand (FasL) and Fas, have been detected in follicles and also demonstrated to be capable of inducing apoptosis in follicular cells. Decoy receptor 3 (DcR3) competes with Fas to bind FasL but lacks intracellular death domains, thus inhibitin...