“…In order to justify or negate this notion, the present study was carried out to examine the developmental competence of OPU-derived COCs by studying the expression profile of a panel of genes, related to oocyte proper, cumulus-oocyte interaction, fertilization, embryonic development and apoptosis, both at germinal vesicle (GV) stage as well as after in vitro maturation (IVM). The panel of genes selected for expression analysis included genes associated with: follicular development and ovulation like, CONNEXIN37, CONNEXIN43, BMP15, GDF9, bFGF (Gospodarowicz et al, 1985;Goodenough et al, 1996;Fair et al, 1997;Simon et al, 1997;Elvin et al, 1999;Otsuka et al, 2000;Ackert et al, 2001;Nilsson et al, 2001;Granot and Dekel, 2002;Gittens et al, 2003;Moore and Shimasaki, 2005); Fertilization like, ZP2 and ZP3 (Chen et al, 2011;Shah et al, 2015); Embryonic-genome activation like, ZAR1, HSF1 (Christians et al, 2000;Wu et al, 2003); and Embryonic survival like, BAX, BID, BCL-XL, MCL1 (Chang and Yang, 2000;Jin et al, 2007;Goovartaes et al, 2011). The developmental competence was further elucidated by comparing embryonic developmental potential of Group 1 and Group 2 oocytes, following in vitro fertilization (IVF) and culture of the presumed zygotes.…”