Part of the assisted reproduction process with cattle is to aspirate immature eggs — or oocytes — from a cow and develop them in a culture medium. A project led by veterinarian Lawrence Charles Smith of the University of São Paulo (USP) is seeking to control the maturation of these oocytes (the red sphere in the image) with the aim of improving quality. The genetic material highlighted in blue shows the cells that nourish the egg, and the red lines are the actin filaments, indicating that there is communication between the cells — a good sign. The green sphere is the nucleus of the oocyte, inside which the blue DNA can be seen.
Image submitted by veterinarian Helena Saraiva, who is working on the project at the School of Animal Science and Food Engineering (FZEA) at USP’s Pirassununga campus
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