Morphological and functional characterization of bovine oviductal epithelial cell monolayers cultured on polarizing membranes.

Several characteristics of oviductal cells, cultured under either polarizing or nonpolarizing conditions, were studied. In vitro produced bovine embryos tested the embryotrophic abilities of the respective conditioned media. Conditioned medium from the apical face of polarized cell monolayers supported higher rates of development to blastocyst and expanded blastocysts. In contrast, conditioned medium from the basal face supported embryo development only to the 8-16 cell stage; however, these embryos were able to continue development to the morula stage when cultured in medium from the apical and basal faces, indicating total cell confluence and a clear functional polarization. At the ultrastructural level, cells cultured in polarizing conditions displayed characteristics nearer to the same cells in vivo and signs of a metabolic activity higher than that in cells cultured under non-polarizing conditions. It can be concluded that cell-polarization, in our culture conditions, is beneficial to embryo development.