Submitted by Mario BC (mario@bc.ufrpe.br) on 2019-09-30T14:10:36Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Diogo Manoel Farias da Silva.pdf: 2499657 bytes, checksum: 179ed9b185ac86e5126240c68041a94c (MD5) Made available in DSpace on 2019-09-30T14:10:36Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Diogo Manoel Farias da Silva.pdf: 2499657 bytes, checksum: 179ed9b185ac86e5126240c68041a94c (MD5) Previous issue date: 2019-02-20 Insulin may have effects on folliculogenesis in in vitro culture, which allowed a greater preantral follicles to be obtained for later embryo production. In this context, the objective of this work was to determine the effect of the hormone insulin on the in vitro culture of ovarian fragments of the ovine species, associated or not with FSH. For ovaries were collected in slaughterhouses and stored in MEM-HEPES medium at 4 ° C and taken to the laboratory. For in vitro culture, fragments of the ovarian cortex (3x3x2mm) and cultured in α-MEM + medium were obtained for 8 days at 39 ° C with 5% CO2. After culture, the fragments were processed and histologically analyzed for morphological evaluation of follicular development (activation, maintenance of the morphology and diameter of the oocyte and follicle), immunohistochemical analysis for localization of the nuclear proliferation antigen and gene expression of mRNA messenger RNA for the apoptotic gene (caspase 3) and steroidogenesis (CYP17 and CYP19). The flow of information allowed to separate the study in two experiments. Experiment 1: In vitro culture of the tissues, evaluating the effects of the hormone insulin at the concentrations of (0, 1, 10, 100, 1.000 and 10.000 ng/mL) on the activation, development and maintenance of morphology. Experiment 2: In vitro culture with hormone insulin (0.1, 100 ng/mL) associated with FSH on the activation, development, maintenance of morphology, nuclear proliferation antigen (PCNA) and expression of caspase 3, CYP17 and CYP19 genes. In the experiment 1 the results showed that: The highest percentages of activation were observed at concentrations of 1 and 100 ng/mL of the hormone (P