Analysis of apoptosis and expression of bcl-2 gene family members in the human and baboon ovary.

Recent data support a role for apoptosis, under tight regulatory control by bcl-2, oxidative stress response, tumor suppressor, and CASP gene family members, in mediating granulosa cell demise during follicular atresia in the rodent and avian ovary. Herein we evaluated the occurrence of apoptosis in the human and baboon ovary relative to follicular health status, and analyzed expression of several cell death genes in these tissues. In situlocalization of DNA strand breaks in fixed human and baboon ovarian tissue sections indicated that apoptosis was essentially restricted to granulosa cells of atretic antral follicles.

Requirement for phosphatidylinositol-3'-kinase in cytokine-mediated germ cell survival during fetal oogenesis in the mouse.

Apoptosis is responsible for primordial germ cell (PGC) attrition in the developing fetal ovary. In monolayer cultures of murine PGC, stem cell factor (SCF) and leukemia inhibitory factor (LIF) independently promote survival in vitro; however, the relevance of these data to fetal ovarian oogonium and oocyte survival, as well as the intracellular events involved in transducing the antiapoptotic actions of these cytokines in germ cells, remain to be elucidated. In this report, we investigated the effects of SCF and LIF, alone and in combination, on the survival of oogonia and oocytes, and elaborated on components of the signal transduction pathway used by these molecules, after validating a method of culturing fetal mouse ovaries.