From clinics to (cow)mics: A reproductive journey

Abstract

This manuscript describes the different topics I have been involved in the fields of reproductive physiology and embryo biotechnologies with attempts to address practical issues raised mainly by the breeding industry. The journey started with phenotyping work in the field of reproductive physio-pathology. Other issues were related to the optimization of reproductive biotechnologies to favorize genetic selection. The implementation of genomic selection raised opportunities to develop the use embryo biotechnologies and showed the interest of combining them in the case of embryo genotyping. There is still a need to refine phenotyping for reproductive traits especially for the identification of markers of uterine dysfunction. It is believed that new knowledge generated by combining different molecular approaches will be the source of applications that may benefit AI practice and embryo technologies.