Pluripotent epiblast (EPI) cells, present in the inner cell mass (ICM) of the mouse blastocyst, are progenitors of both embryonic stem (ES) cells and the fetus. Discovering how pluripotency genes regulate cell fate decisions in the blastocyst provides a valuable way to understand how pluripotency is normally established. EPI cells are specified by two consecutive cell fate decisions. The first ...

Background: The aim of our study was to compare the resulting from transfer of embryos that cryopereserved in cleavage stage after thawing and transfer of embryos after thawing and culture in sequentional media until blastocyst formation. Materials and Methods: In this prospective clinical study, we have evaluated 128 cycles in women undergone in vitro fertilization (IVF) or intracytoplasmic sp...

Transfer at the blastocyst stage has been proposed to increase the pregnancy rates after in-vitro fertilization (IVF) and embryo transfer. In the first period of experiments, culture in a single medium, from fertilization to blastocyst led to disappointing results: low blastocyst formation rates and low implantation rates per blastocyst transferred. Then the period of co-culture began (starting...

in vitro maturation (ivm) was carried out in the presence of different concentrations (10, 50, 100 or 200 µm) of α-linolenic acid (ala). embryonic cleavage, blastocyst formation following parthenogenetic activation (pa) and in vitro fertilization (ivf), and numbers of total and apoptotic cells in blastocyst were then determine for the 50 μm concentration and compared with the control group. out...

In order to investigate the influence of the molecular karyotype based on single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) microarray on embryonic development potential in preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), we retrospectively analyzed the clinical data generated by PGD using embryos retrieved from parents with chromosome rearrangements in our center. In total, 929 embryos from 119 couples had exact d...

This study assesses the fertilization and blastocyst-forming rate in mice cumulus-oocyte complexes (COCs) after the exposure of human ovarian endometriotic fluid. Endometriotic fluid was obtained from a single patient by aspiration at the time of a laparoscopic cystectomy and serially diluted. COCs were obtained from 46-week-old female BDF1 mice. After exposure to ovarian endometriotic fluid fo...

Normal development of the mouse embryo requires the presence of both paternal and maternal genomes. This is due to functional differences having their origin in a differential imprinting of parental genomes. Furthermore, several lines of evidence show that the very early interactions between egg cytoplasm and pronuclei may influence the programming of the embryonic genome and modulate the funct...

The reaggregation and subsequent development of a range of disaggregated embryos has been examined: 1. Following complete dissociation embryos from 8-cell to late blastocyst reaggregated and developed to form morphologically normal blastocysts, even when blastomeres of two different developmental stages were present in the reaggregate. 2. Dissociated mid-blastocysts could also reaggregate to fo...

Y‑27632 is a specific inhibitor of Rho‑associated protein kinases (ROCKs), which are downstream effectors of Rho GTPase. The present study aimed to determine the effect of the specific ROCK inhibitor, Y‑27632, on fresh human embryos and on single blastomeres obtained from discarded human embryos. A total of 784 poor‑quality embryos were included, of which 526 were allocated to blastocyst cultur...