Fig. 1.

Representative MMP-2 and MMP-9 zymography gel of human follicular fluids. Zymography assay was performed as described in the section of Materials and Methods. The gel was analyzed by 8 % SDS-PAGE and followed by Coomassie staining. There was related higher MMP-2 activity compared with MMP-9 activity detected in the follicular fluids. The zymography gel was loaded with 5 μl of samples diluted 5× in PBS to quantify proMMP-2 and proMMP-9 activity. The representative gel shows follicular fluids from 4 patients with 100 % MII oocytes (high oocyte maturity) and 4 patients with <100 % MII oocytes (low oocyte maturity), as well as one control lane with recombinant proMMP-2 and proMMP-9. MMP-9 (92 kDa) and MMP-2 (72 kDa) on the zymography gel were indicated