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10 - Hormones and growth factors in the regulation of oocyte maturation

from Section 3 - Developmental biology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 October 2013

By
Marco Conti
Edited by
Alan Trounson ,
Roger Gosden  and
Ursula Eichenlaub-Ritter
Marco Conti
Affiliation:
Center for Reproductive Sciences and The Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regeneration Medicine and Stem Cell Research, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences, University of California, San Francisco, CA, USA
Alan Trounson
Affiliation:
California Institute for Regenerative Medicine
Roger Gosden
Affiliation:
Center for Reproductive Medicine and Infertility, Cornell University, New York
Ursula Eichenlaub-Ritter
Affiliation:
Universität Bielefeld, Germany
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Summary

Introduction

Oocyte maturation is the process by which a fully grown oocyte completes the developmental program initiated during fetal life to become a fertilizable egg. It has long been known that this process is triggered by endocrine signals generated by the pituitary. However, only recently has it become clear that the extensive reprogramming of the oocyte and somatic cells associated with ovulation also requires local paracrine and autocrine signals. These local regulations functioning within the periovulatory follicle will be the focus of this chapter.

Oocyte development and the follicle environment

A unique property of the female germ cell is the specialized meiotic cell cycle. Female meiosis initiates in the fetal gonad but will be completed only at the time the follicle is preparing for ovulation [1]. Thus, completion of meiosis may take more than 40 years in a woman. Although recent data in mouse and human have challenged the dogma that meiosis initiation does not occur in the postnatal life [2], the most widely held view is that a neonatal ovary is endowed with a finite number of oocytes that have completed the meiotic prophase but are held in a suspended state of the cell cycle, termed the dictyate state or germinal vesicle (GV) stage.

Type
Chapter
Information
Biology and Pathology of the Oocyte
Role in Fertility, Medicine and Nuclear Reprograming
 , pp. 109 - 118
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2013

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