Spermatogonial Gene Networks Selectively Couple to Glutathione and Pentose Phosphate Metabolism but Not Cysteine Biosynthesis.

In adult males, spermatogonia maintain lifelong spermatozoa production for oocyte fertilization. To understand spermatogonial metabolism we compared gene profiles in rat spermatogonia to publicly available mouse, monkey, and human spermatogonial gene profiles. Interestingly, rat spermatogonia expressed metabolic control factors , , and Germline Foxa2 was enriched in Gfra1 and Gfra1 undifferentiated A-single spermatogonia.

Neuroprotection via Reduction in Stress: Altered Menstrual Patterns as a Marker for Stress and Implications for Long-Term Neurologic Health in Women.

Individuals under chronic psychological stress can be difficult to identify clinically. There is often no outwardly visible phenotype. Chronic stress of sufficient magnitude not only impacts reproductive function, but also concomitantly elicits a constellation of neuroendocrine changes that may accelerate aging in general and brain aging in particular.

Transfer of IVF-contaminated blastocysts with removal of the zona pellucida resulted in live births.

Purpose: Bacterial contamination may cause loss or damage to cultured oocytes or embryos, resulting in cancelation or delaying of a fresh embryo transfer. While live births have been reported following the transfer of embryos contaminated with yeast, very little information is available on how to handle embryos with bacterial contamination. We report two cases of successful pregnancy in patients with bacterial contamination of embryo culture dishes.

An exploratory evaluation of tyrosine hydroxylase inhibition in planaria as a model for parkinsonism.

Planaria are the simplest organisms with bilateral symmetry and a central nervous system (CNS) with cephalization; therefore, they could be useful as model organisms to investigate mechanistic aspects of parkinsonism and to screen potential therapeutic agents. Taking advantage of the organism's anti-tropism towards light, we measured a significantly reduced locomotor velocity in planaria after exposure to 3-iodo-L-tyrosine, an inhibitor of tyrosine hydroxylase that is an enzyme catalyzing the first and rate-limiting step in the biosynthesis of catecholamines. A simple semi-automatic assay using videotaped experiments and subsequent evaluation by tracking software was also implemented to increase throughput.