Effects of oocyte activation factors derived from spermatozoa on the embryo development.

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During fertilization, sperm entry triggers a series of intracellular calcium oscillations critical to oocyte activation. This activation is prerequisite to the resumption and completion of meiosis, subsequent pronuclear formation and DNA synthesis.Intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) has been applied to human infertility treatment. This technique could be also useful for determining the roles of various sperm components in fertilization. Although ICSI is usually a highly successful treatment for severe male factor infertility, some cases repeatedly experience low ICSI fertilization rates (<50%). Possible causes include failure of oocyte activation resulting from sperm and/or oocyte defects. Previous studies have shown that oocytes injected with round spermatids (Hosoi et al., 2000) can be activated by the calcium ionophore A23187.Various artificial treatments mimic sperm-triggered events and induce parthenogenetic development in MII oocytes. It suggests that additional stimulation helps development of fertilized eggs under insufficient condition. In considering the application of intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) for endangered species and infertility patients, in many cases only not adequate gametes are expected to be used for reproduction. In conclusion, our study showed that oocytes activation factors was very important for artificial fertilization.