Oocyte genome cloning is a method by which haploid maternal embryos are obtained in such a way that parthenogenetic haploid blastomeres from these embryos can be considered as a clone of the original gamete. Our objective was to generate oocyte genome replicates and use them to reconstruct biparental embryos by fusion with haploid male hemizygotes. Furthermore, we generated biparental homogeneo...

Much is anticipated from the development and deployment of nanomaterials in biological organisms, but concerns remain regarding their biocompatibility and target specificity. Here we report our study of the transport, biocompatibility and toxicity of purified and stable silver nanoparticles (Ag NPs, 13.1 ± 2.5 nm in diameter) upon the specific developmental stages of zebrafish embryos using sin...

This study investigated the relationship between human preimplantation embryo metabolism and aneuploidy rates during development in vitro. One hundred and eighty-eight fresh and cryopreserved embryos from 59 patients (33.9 +/- 0.6 years) were cultured for 2-5 days. The turnover of 18 amino acids was measured in spent media by high-performance liquid chromatography. Embryos were either fixed for...

Establishment of totipotency after somatic cell nuclear transfer (NT) requires not only reprogramming of gene expression, but also conversion of the cell cycle from quiescence to the precisely timed sequence of embryonic cleavage. Inadequate adaptation of the somatic nucleus to the embryonic cell cycle regime may lay the foundation for NT embryo failure and their reported lower cell counts. We ...

At the 64-cell-stage embryos of Patella develop a prototroch consisting of four groups of four cilia-bearing cells. Ciliogenesis of isolated blastomeres and trochoblasts was studied, as well as the effect on it of cleavage arrest caused by cytochalasin B treatment. Isolation of blastomeres or trochoblast cells has no influence on ciliogenesis; neither has arrest of cleavage in whole embryos aft...

The objective of this retrospective study was to determine an optimal time point for vitrification of cleavage-stage human embryos. This study included patients who were undergoing day 2 or day 3 vitrified-warmed cleavage-stage embryo transfer at the In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) Programme of the Shanghai First Maternity and Infant Hospital, China, affiliated to the Tongji University School of M...

Embryos from Bos indicus are more resistant to elevated culture temperature (i.e. heat shock) than embryos from some Bos taurus breeds. The present experiment was designed to determine if Brahman embryos have greater resistance to heat shock than Holstein embryos at a stage in development before the embryonic genome was fully activated. A second objective was to test breed effects on estrus syn...

background: mammalian oocytes are exposed to a mixture of many different growth factors and cytokines which provides an optimized microenvironment for oocyte maturation. in the lack of this natural microenvironment in vitro the quality of oocyte and embryos appears to be suboptimal. objective: this study was undertaken to investigate the effects of egf and lif on in vitro maturation fertilizati...

the nutritional requirements of mammalian embryos changes throughout pre-implantation period, coincident with changes in the secretion of the female reproductive tract. therefore, it has been suggested that sequential culture media may support nutritional requirements for optimal growth of the mammalian embryos. in this study, we investigated the effect of two different concentrations (10 or 10...