Publications by authors named "A Kurg"

Article Synopsis
  • This study focuses on embryonic genome activation (EGA) in bovine embryonic development, highlighting the need to understand the role of PRD-like (PRDL) transcription factors that are crucial for this process but have evolved differently across species.
  • Molecular cloning was performed on several PRDL TFs in bovine oocytes and IVF preimplantation embryos, confirming their expression and revealing breed-related genetic variations through the identification of numerous single nucleotide variants (SNVs).
  • The research demonstrated that overexpressing the TPRX3 gene in bovine fibroblasts activates not only protein-coding genes but also small noncoding RNAs, supporting the notion of shared gene sets in early bovine
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Article Synopsis
  • Pregnancy loss is frequently linked to chromosomal abnormalities, with a study revealing that about 50.4% of spontaneous losses had karyotypically abnormal products of conception, influenced by parental age.
  • The researchers examined 94 cases of loss with normal karyotypes and discovered that 35.1% exhibited previously undetected chromosomal issues, raising the overall rate of abnormalities to 67.8%.
  • Findings indicate that unlike viable pregnancies, where abnormalities are often limited to chorionic villi, pregnancy losses show more mosaicism in extra-embryonic tissues, highlighting the need for deeper analysis of genomic abnormalities to enhance understanding and treatment.
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Human granulosa cells acquired as leftover from IVF treatment can be used to study infertility problems and are a valuable tool in the research of follicle maturation and ovulation. There is a need for more defined and long-term culture protocols for studying the response of granulosa cells upon treatment with selected hormones/chemicals. In the current study, we tested the effect of adding FGF2, IGF2 and FSH into defined basal medium in order to find culture conditions that would support proliferation of cumulus and mural granulosa cells along with the expression of common granulosa cell type markers such as FSHR, AMHR2, LHR and CYP19A1.

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MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are known post-transcriptional regulators of various biological processes including ovarian follicle development. We have previously identified miRNAs from human pre-ovulatory ovarian granulosa cells that are expressed from the intronic regions of two key genes in normal follicular development: FSH receptor (FSHR) and CYP19A1, the latter encoding the aromatase enzyme. The present study aims to identify the target genes regulated by these miRNAs: hsa-miR-548ba and hsa-miR-7973, respectively.

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Chromatin immunoprecipitation coupled with next-generation sequencing (ChIP-seq) has revolutionized our understanding of chromatin-related biological processes. The method, however, requires thousands of cells and has therefore limited applications in situations where cell numbers are limited. Here we describe a novel method called Restriction Assisted Tagmentation Chromatin Immunoprecipitation (RAT-ChIP) that enables global histone modification profiling from as few as 100 cells.

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