Manufacturing a Female Gamete: An Oocyte Story
A special issue of Cells (ISSN 2073-4409). This special issue belongs to the section "Cell Proliferation and Division".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 April 2020) | Viewed by 86051
Special Issue Editors
Interests: oocyte meiotic divisions in Xenopus; signal transduction; kinases and phosphatases; biochemistry of cell division; oogenesis
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
The continuity of life on earth has been ensured since its apparition more than 3.5 billions years ago: Cells only arise from pre-existing cells. In multicellular organisms, unlike the “perishable body of the individual”, something—the “hereditary substance”—has to be passed from generation to generation (in quotes: Wording of August Weissman, 1892). This is the duty of gametes: Oocytes and sperm. Building a fertilizable female gamete is then one of the founding elements of the sexual reproduction of multicellular organisms. This construction is a lengthy, complex, and highly coordinated saga that begins with an undetermined germ cell and transforms it into an oocyte capable of being fertilized. How germ cells come to be oocytes involves profound cell transformations: The construction of a polarized cell infrastructure, extraordinary cell growth, haploid and recombined genetic equipment, and competence with regard to fertilization, all of which are necessary to support the development of the future embryo. This manufacturing implies many specialized and decision-making processes: Communication and interactions between germ cells and somatic cells, meiotic chromosome pairing and homologous recombination, controlled expression of maternal information, metabolic requirements, complex signaling cascades, highly specialized cell divisions, and specific chromosome segregation, supported by adapted cytoskeleton organization and chromatin remodeling.
This Special Issue of Cells should present a comprehensive overview of the oogenesis process in chronological order, including chapters on diverse model organisms that offer an evolutionary perspective to sexual reproduction as well as others covering medical considerations. Based on the contributions of world-leading experts, this Special Issue will be an essential reference for students, researchers, and physicians in the exciting field of research on this fascinating cell.
Dr. Catherine Jessus
Guest Editor
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Keywords
- Oocyte
- Oogenesis
- Meiosis
- Meiotic spindle
- Meiotic recombination
- Fertilization
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