The preimplantation development of the mammalian embryo encompasses a series of critical events: the transition from oocyte to embryo, the first cell divisions, the establishment of cellular contacts, the first lineage differentiation-all the first subtle steps toward a future body plan. Here, we use microarrays to explore gene activity during preimplantation development. We reveal robust and d...

objective: after the introduction of assisted reproductive techniques, human embryos were officially introduced into laboratories and now thousands of them are cryopreserved in such settings. embryonic stem cells and the future application of such cells in the treatment of disease opened the door to further research on human embryos. these developments raise many ethical issues, some of which h...

the development of culture media able to mimic the preovulatory stage of follicular environment and support nuclear and cytoplasmic maturation of oocyte is important for in-vitro fertilization (ivf) programs. it seems that the best culture media for embryonic development and cell cleavage is the natural composition which surrounds the oocyte which has been used occasionally in human ivf program...

Background: The beneficial effect of supplementing culture medium with melatonin has been reported during in vitro embryo development of species such as mouse, bovine and porcine. However, the effect of melatonin on the mouse somatic cell nuclear transfer remained unknown. Materials and Methods: In this study, we assessed the effects of various concentrations of melatonin (10-6 to 10-12 M) on t...

This study assessed the feasibility of using LeY glycan secretion level in human embryos as a method of judging embryo quality. Embryo culture media from patients receiving in vitro fertilization-embryo transfer was collected, and quality scores of embryos were recorded. Secretions of LeY in the culture media in different development stages (from 4-cell to 10-cell), embryos in the same developm...

Glutathione/ glutathione disulfide and ascorbic acid /dehydroascorbateare two major redox pairs that control the redox-state in a developing seed.Recently these redox compounds have been shown to exert strong positive effectson embryo development in several plants including white spruce. A picture isemerging that early-stage embryo development occurs best in the presence of a<lb...

introduction: the aim of this study was to investigate the growth and development of mouse two cell embryo on human uterine polarized monolayers. material and methodes: human endometrial tissue was obtained from patients who had undergone total hysterectomy. then, epithelial cells were isolated by collagenase i 0.25% and cultured on either ecm gel coated millipore filter insert (polarized) or p...

introduction: mouse embryos can successfully be frozen with sucrose and propandiol. however, different developmental stages of mammalian embryos have shown to have various capacities to undergo freeze-thawing procedure. in the present study, the ability of 1,2,4 and 8-ell mouse embryo to tolerate the freeze-thawing procedure was investigated and the effect of this procedure on the further in vi...

It has been demonstrated previously that removal of acellular debris from the preimplantation mouse embryo is beneficial for subsequent development to the hatched blastocyst stage. We have studied the impact of cellular fragmentation induced in the mouse embryo during the late pronuclei and 8-cell stages on the hatching frequency and total cell number at the blastocyst stage. At the late pronuc...

Platelet-activating factor (1-o-alkyl-2-acetyl-sn-gylcero-3-phosphocholine [PAF]) is one of several autocrine trophic factors supporting the development of the preimplantation embryo. PAF acts on the embryo to induce receptor-mediated intracellular calcium (Ca(2+))(i) transients, and these coincide with a marked membrane hyperpolarization. Patch-clamp analysis of 2-cell embryos showed that thes...