The influences of glucose supplementation on early development of bovine embryos in BSA-free synthetic oviduct fluid were examined. Among the groups supplemented with 1.5, 2.0, 4.0 or 5.6 mM glucose either at 0, 72 or 144 hr after fertilization, blastocysts yield significantly increased in the group supplemented with 4.0 mM glucose 144 hr after fertilization compared to the controls without glu...

To determine the presence of sexual dimorphic transcription and how in vitro culture environments influence X-linked gene transcription patterns in preimplantation embryos, we analyzed mRNA expression levels in in vivo-derived, in vitro-fertilized (IVF), and cloned porcine blastocysts. Our results clearly show that sex-biased expression occurred between female and male in vivo blastocysts in X-...

Amino acid transport system B(0,+) was first characterized in detail in mouse blastocysts over two decades ago. Since then, this system has been shown to be involved in a wide array of developmental processes from blastocyst implantation in the uterus to adult obesity. Leucine uptake through system B(0,+) in blastocysts triggers mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) signalling. This signalling p...

This study was designed to provide further information on mouse and human embryo development in alpha-modified minimum essential medium (alphaMEM). First, we compared the development and implantation potential of murine in-vitro fertilized (IVF) embryos cultured in alphaMEM, in the presence and absence of co-culture cells. No significant difference was observed in blastocyst rate between alphaM...

The overall aim of this work was to examine the expression profiles for fibroblast growth factor receptors (FGFRs) and describe their biological importance during bovine pre- and peri-implantation conceptus development. FGFR1 and FGFR2 mRNAs were detected at 1-, 2-, 8-cell, morula and blastocyst stages whereas FGFR3 and FGFR4 mRNAs were detected after the 8-cell stage but not earlier. The abund...

Inner cell masses (ICMs) dissected from 4 1/2-day rat blastocysts were aggregated with 2 1/2-day mouse morulae. Successful aggregates formed blastocysts in vitro and morphologically normal 5 1/2-day conceptuses in the mouse uterus. Immunofluorescent analysis of these conceptuses revealed that rat cells were only present in the embryonic ectoderm and endoderm and never in the trophectoderm deriv...

Granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF) secretion from epithelial cells lining the female reproductive tract is induced during early pregnancy by ovarian steroid hormones and constituents of seminal plasma. In this study we have investigated the influence of GM-CSF on development of preimplantation mouse embryos. Blastocyst-stage embryos were found to specifically bind (125)I-...

BACKGROUND A decrease in aneuploidy rate following a prolonged co-culture of human blastocysts has been reported. As co-culture is not routinely used in assisted reproductive technology, the present study aimed to evaluate the effect of the prolonged single culture on the rate of diploid cells in human embryos with aneuploidies. MATERIALS AND METHODS In this cohort study, we used fluorescence...

abstract background: research studies on reproductive mechanism of laboratory animals are essential for further advancement of assisted reproductive techniques (art). one of these studies includes the assessment of in-vitro development of pre-implantation embryos. the objective was to compare the cleavage rates and morphology of in-vivo formed 2 to 8 cell embryos and blastocysts with in-vitro c...

cryopreservation and sexing of embryos are integrated into commercial embryo transfer technologies. to improve the effectiveness of vitrification of in vitro produced buffalo embryos, two experiments were conducted. the first evaluated the effect of exposure time (2 and 3 min) and developmental stage (morula and blastocysts) on the viability and development of vitrified buffalo embryos. morphol...