Members of the Center for Nutrition and Pregnancy presented at several prominent national and international conferences during the summer. Research associate Pawel Borowicz, professor Larry Reynolds, professor Anna Grazul-Bilska, professor and co-director of the Center for Nutrition and Pregnancy Joel Caton, assistant professor and co-director of the Center for Nutrition and Pregnancy Kim Vonnahme, assistant professor Carrie Hammer, assistant professor Kasey Maddock Carlin and professor of animal science Dale Redmer, as well as doctoral candidate Allison Meyer presented at the American Society of Animal Sciences Conference in Montreal in July.
Presented papers included, "Assisted Reproductive Technologies Have a Dramatic Effect on Cell Proliferation in Ovine Fetal Membranes During Early Pregnancy," "Large Animal Models of Developmental Programming and Effects of Nutritional Plane and Selenium Supply on Intestinal Mass, Cellularity and Proliferation in the Ewe.”
Johnson, Reynolds, Redmer, Vonnahme, Caton, Grazul-Bilska and Borowicz presented abstracts to the Society for the Study of Reproduction meeting on July 23-26 in Pittsburgh. Presented papers include "Influence of Plane of Nutrition and In Vitro Hypoxia on Expression of Normal Prion Protein (PrPC) mRNA in Placental Tissue Explants from Adolescent Sheep at Day 75 of Pregnancy;" "Expression of Gap Junctional Protein Connexin (Cx) 37 and Cx43 in Fetal Ovaries Obtained from Sheep in Late Pregnancy;" "Implications for Developmental Programming;" "Relationship Between Vascular Growth and Expression of Angiogenic Factors in Uterine Tissues During Early Pregnancy in Sheep;" "Markers of Ovarian Antral Follicular Development in Sheep: Differences Between Final (FW) and Penultimate (PW) Wave Preovulatory Follicles;" and "Cell Proliferation and Vascularization in Human Endometrium of Different Reproductive Failures."
Grazul-Bilska was invited to have a presentation, titled "Angiogenesis in Placenta and Uterus," for the joint seminar of the Polish Society of Physiology and Society of Reproductive Biology at the University of Warmia and Mazury and Polish Academy of Sciences in Olsztyn, Poland; and also for medical and research faculty and staff seminar at the Department of Gynecology, Endocrinology and Reproductive Medicine at the University of Heidelberg, Germany, both in June.
The mission of the Center for Nutrition and Pregnancy is to provide coordinated research activities focused on the impact of nutrition during pregnancy on health of the mother, fetus and offspring. These studies are conducted using several animal models, including adolescent or aged pregnancies, differing fetal and maternal genotypes and pregnancies with single or multiple fetuses.
