Bioscientifica Proceedings

Over the past 30 years, basic and applied studies on classical and advanced embryo technologies have generated a vast literature on factors regulating oocyte and embryo development and quality. In addition, over this period, commercial bovine embryo transfer has become a large international business. It is well recognised that bovine embryos derived in vivo are of superior quality to those derived from in vitro maturation, fertilization and culture. Relatively little has chang...

Somatic cell nuclear transfer (cloning) returns a differentiated cell to a totipotent status; a process termed nuclear reprogramming. Nuclear transfer has potential applications in agriculture and biomedicine, but is limited by low efficiency. To understand the deficiencies of nuclear reprogramming, our research has focused on both candidate genes (imprinted and X-linked genes) and global gene expression patterns in cloned bovine embryos/offspring as compared to those generate...