Reproductive Technology Flashcards
What is infertility treatments?
Infertility can be treated
by administration of hormones that act directly on the ovaries or regulate their functions, or act to help maintain pregnancy.
Hormonal treatment can also work on male dogs with low sperm counts or poor libido.
What is synchronisation?
Oestrous synchronisation is the process of targeting female mammals to come to heat within a short time frame (36 to 96 hours).
This is achieved through the use of one or more hormones.
What is superovulation?
Superovulation, also called superstimulation, is a treatment intended to increase the ovulation rate and thus the number of available oocytes in the donor animal.
This is done without disrupting the physiological and endocrinological processes associated with oocyte maturation, ovulation, and fertilisation, as well as subsequent embryonic and foetal development.
What is artificial insemination?
is the process of collecting sperm cells from a male animal and manually depositing them into the reproductive tract of a female.
What is ovulation indicators?
Timing of ovulation in relation to cardinal signs of oestrus. Among the different signs of oestrus, tumefaction of vulva, reddening of vulvar mucus membrane and the mucus discharge appeared at earliest in relation to the ovulation time, followed by sniffing or licking of vulva and chin resting.
Other secondary signs of oestrus
include restlessness, bellowing, frequent urination, swelling, and redness of the vulva along with a rise in body temperature.
These changes in the behaviour of animals are recorded to breed the animal at the optimal time to maximize the chances of pregnancy.
What is embryo transplants?
Embryo Transfer involves the recovery of embryos, usually from an elite donor female and the subsequent transfer to recipient females.
The recovery of embryos includes the induction of multiple ovulation by hormonal treatment.
What is cloning?
The cloning process usually involves removing DNA from a cell taken from one animal and placing this into an egg cell from another animal. This must be an unfertilised egg that has had its own DNA removed.
This process was first successful in 1995 with two identical sheep called Megan and Morag being cloned by differentiated cells.
However, they do not get the attention they deserve as they were quickly outshined in 1996 by Dolly, she was cloned in a different way by using an adult somatic cell. She quickly became famous gaining the title Dolly The Sheep.
Dolly was euthanised in 2003 after being diagnosed with an incurable lung tumour at the age of 6. She was roughly 70 years old in “sheep years”.
What is genetic analysis?
Genetic analysis is a term used to describe the study of a sample of DNA to look at differences, or variants, that may increase an individual’s risk for disease or impact drug responses.
This allows breeders to have an in-depth overview of any hereditary conditions that could be passed onto the offspring and selectively breed the animals to avoid these complications.
In some cases, the DNA can be altered to remove genes carrying undesirable traits through genetic engineering.
What is genetic engineering?
Genetic engineering, also called genetic modification, is a process that uses laboratory-based technologies to alter the DNA makeup of an organism.
This may involve changing a single base pair, deleting a region of DNA or adding a new segment of DNA.
