Participants: Desislava Abadjieva

The name of the visited institution: Human and Animal Physiology Group, Department of Animal Sciences, Wageningen University, Wageningen, Netherlands - Prof. K. Teerds

Duration - 05.06. - 03.07.2010

Purpose of the visit – Training and experiments on the topic “Mitochondrial function in gametes. Methods for evaluation”.

The research program included:

• Introduction of the research team and the current research in the laboratory on the metabolism of the nutrients, the effect of bioactive nutrients and physiological factors on the functions of the organism;
• Training in methods for assessment of normal and pathogenic structures in different animal organs subjected to different treatments; 
• Assessment of the mitochondrial activity of gametes in reference to their functional status. 
• Introduction to techniques and methods for physiological measurements of laboratory animals (body mass, increase of body mass, food energy) and to the calorimetric method to measure the energy expenditure. 
• Introduction to the methods for RT-PCR and RNA silencing by transfection.
• Participation in a laboratory seminar of the Group of Physiology of animals and human to present the ReProForce project and to discuss the results of the training.  

The scientific program was successfully realized and new methods were studied for assessment of different physiological processes and evaluation of the mitochondrial functions in gametes, which can be applied in research in IBIR.