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Mol. Hum. Reprod. Advance Access originally published online on July 7, 2009
Molecular Human Reproduction 2009 15(12):805-819; doi:10.1093/molehr/gap055
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© The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

This article appears in the following Molecular Human Reproduction issue: Special Issue: The ovary: from basic research to clinic [View the issue table of contents]

Oogenesis and cell death in human prenatal ovaries: what are the criteria for oocyte selection?

G.M. Hartshorne1,6, S. Lyrakou2, H. Hamoda3, E. Oloto4 and F. Ghafari5

1 Clinical Sciences Research Institute, Warwick Medical School, University of Warwick, Coventry CV2 2DX, UK 2 EuroGene Genetics Lab Ltd, 21–23 Gounari Street, 18531 Piraeus, Greece 3 Queen Charlotte's Hospital, Du Cane Road, Greater London W12 0HS, UK 4 British Pregnancy Advisory Service, 20 Timothy's Bridge Road, Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire CV37 9BF, UK 5 Luton Institute for Research in Applied Natural Sciences, 250 Butterfield, Great Marlings, Luton LU2 8DL, UK

6 Correspondence address. E-mail: geraldine.hartshorne{at}warwick.ac.uk

Prenatal oogenesis produces hundreds of thousands of oocytes, most of which are discarded through apoptosis before birth. Despite this large-scale selection, the survivors do not constitute a perfect population, and the factors at the cellular level that result in apoptosis or survival of any individual oocyte are largely unknown. What then are the selection criteria that determine the size and quality of the ovarian reserve in women? This review focuses on new data at the cellular level, on human prenatal oogenesis, offering clues about the importance of the timing of entry to meiotic prophase I by linking the stages and progress through MPI with the presence or absence of apoptotic markers. The characteristics and responsiveness of cultured human fetal ovarian tissue at different gestational ages to growth factor supplementation and the impact of meiotic abnormalities upon apoptotic markers are discussed. Future work will require the use of a tissue culture model of prenatal oogenesis in order to investigate the fate of individual live oocytes at different stages of development.

Key words: oogenesis/fetal/oocyte/apoptosis/meiosis

Submitted on February 19, 2009; resubmitted on June 23, 2009; accepted on July 3, 2009.


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