clinical reproductive centers produce large amounts of surplus poor-quality embryos annually, how to maximize the use of these embryos, and which of them have the potential to develop into blastocyst stage and influencing factors were lack of systematic research. objective: to investigate the fate of surplus poor-quality embryos which were cultured to obtain blastocyst, determine the factors wh...

Protein phosphorylation plays many important roles in cell functions and cell differentiation. To clarify the roles of protein phosphorylation in early embryonic development in mice, 2-cell embryos were cultured in the presence of various protein phosphatase inhibitors such as calyculin A, okadaic acid, cyclosporin A, tacrolimus (FK506) and benzyl-phosphonic acid. Calyculin A potently inhibited...

The study was to investigate the effects of ractopamine (RAC) on the in vitro development of 2-cell mouse embryos. The 2-cell mouse embryos were acquired from Kunming mice. Approximately four hundred embryos were randomly divided into 5 groups: control group (0 μM RAC), low-dose group (0.5 μM RAC), mid-dose group (5 μM RAC), high-dose group (50 μM RAC), and clenbuterol (CLB) group (50 μM CLB, p...

Frozen-thawed spermatozoa collected from a beef bull (Japanese Black) were used for in vitro fertilization (IVF) of matured oocytes obtained from dairy (Holstein) and beef (Japanese Black) females. Embryos were examined for fertilization, cleavage rate, interval between insemination and blastocyst production (experiment I), total cell number per embryo and sex ratio during blastocyst formation ...

SETD2 (SET domain containing protein 2) acts as a histone H3 lysine 36 (H3K36)-specific methyltransferase and may play important roles in active gene transcription in human cells. However, its expression and role in porcine oocytes and preimplantation embryos are not well understood. Here, we used immunofluorescence and laser scanning confocal microscopy to examine SETD2 expression in porcine f...

The transition from a late 1-cell mouse embryo to a 4-cell embryo, the period when zygotic gene expression begins, is accompanied by an increasing ability to repress the activities of promoters and replication origins. Since this repression can be relieved by either butyrate or enhancers, it appears to be mediated through chromatin structure. Here we identify changes in the synthesis and modifi...

Background: Hyaluronan (HA) is a structural component of extracellular matrix synthesised by HA synthases HAS1-3, which produce HA of different molecular sizes with distinct biological functions associated with reproductive processes. Hyaluronidase (HYAL) cleaves the HA into biologically active small fragments which are known to regulate cell proliferation through CD44 receptor signaling. HA is...

Different methods were used to assay diphtheria toxin sensitivity of fibroblast and heart cell cultures from chicken embryos of various ages. As defined by inhibition of protein synthesis, fibroblasts from 18-day and younger embryos respond more rapidly to toxin than fibroblasts from older embryos. The response of heart cells cultures is independent of the age of the embryos and is similar to t...

The International Society for Stem Cell Research relaxed the famous 14-day rule on culturing human embryos in its latest research guidelines.

background: embryonic stem cells (esc) are pluripotent cells which have been used as a model to study the mechanism that control the embryogenesis and early mammalian development in vitro. the aim of this study was to isolate and produce embryonic stem cells from late blastocyst stage embryos in mice. materials and methods: blastocyst stage embryos from pregnant nmri mice were obtained and cult...