Parthenogenesis: a model for the study of early events of mammalian development

Abstract

The Development Of New Reproductive technologies has opened new research lines and allowed to propose concepts in the field of reproductive biology and genetics; one of them is parthenogenesis, defined as the birth of a reproduction-capable individual without the participation of the paternal genome. The successful results depend on the normal activation of the oocyte and the embryonic development. The aim of this paper is to review the molecular events related to the induction of parthenogenesis and their potential use in studying the early events of development in humans and animals. The induction of parthenogenesis associated with new embryo micromanipulation technologies and clonation allow to study chromosome separation, early development, centrosomes and new forms of inheritance and nucleus-cytoplasm interactions.