Control of meiotic arrest

Abstract

Oocytes of many species arrest at specific cell cycle stages during their development. An external signal from a hormone or the fertilizing sperm causes them to resume the cell cycle. The control of meiotic arrest can be usefully formulated in terms of the interaction between cell signalling mechanisms and the protein machinery that controls the cell cycle. Much of what we know about cell messengers, particularly calcium, and the cell cycle control proteins comes from work on oocytes. Recent work on cell signalling pathways in mammalian cells and cell cycle control in yeast has been essential to our understanding of meiotic arrest in oocytes.