In the past few years almost every aspect of an IVF cycle has been investigated, including research on sperm, color doppler in follicular studies, prediction embryo cleavage, blastocyst formation, scoring quality, euploid blastocysts and live birth from blastocysts, improving selection process, for developing deep machine learning (ML) algorithms optimal stimulation protocols. Also, artificial ...

Three experiments were undertaken to investigate the effect of some factors on survival and viability of bovine blastocysts produced in vitro in serum-free oviduct-conditioned media. In vitro survival to freezing was higher for blastocysts appearing on days 6 and 7 than for day 8 blastocysts (67 and 50% hatching rate vs 12%). Transfer success of day 8 blastocysts to recipient heifers was 35% (9...

The transcription factor OCT-4 is regarded as a critical factor in controlling mammalian early embryonic development because of its role in toti-/pluripotency. In human preimplantation embryos, OCT-4 studies are limited to RNA analysis of abnormally developing embryos. This study thoroughly investigated the expression pattern of OCT-4 throughout the human preimplantation development. Expression...

BACKGROUND The aim of this study was to analyse the outcome of closed blastocyst vitrification of embryos biopsied at the cleavage stage. METHODS Vitrification of supernumerary blastocysts was performed using the closed CBS-VIT High Security straws. Warming cycles (n = 100) for patients with preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) and/or aneuploidy screening in the fresh cycle were analysed. ...

BACKGROUND High proportions of human embryos produced by in vitro fertilization are aneuploidy and mosaic. DNA microarray is one of the most practical screening methods to select euploid embryos for transfer. However, mosaic pregnancy is still possible due to embryonic mosacism. Here we report a successful pregnancy after transfer of a mosaic blastocyst with euploid inner cell mass. METHODS A...

Most of the commercial devices for vitrification are directly immersed into the warming solution (WS) for increasing of warming rate. However, the previous modified cut standard straw (MCS) which has reported is difficult to immerse into the WS. The aim of this study was to investigate whether the long cut straw (LCS) could be useful as a stable tool for vitrified-warmed human blastocysts. A to...

The hatching of a blastocyst where the blastocyst portions on the inside and the outside of the zona pellucida feature a figure-of-eight shape is termed "8"-shaped hatching; this type of hatching has been reported to affect the proper presentation of the inner cell mass (ICM) in both human and mouse embryos. Here, our aim was to investigate the factors that affect ICM presentation during "8"-sh...

X-chromosome inactivation (XCI) is an epigenetic mechanism that occurs in the eutherian embryo development to equalize the dosage of X-linked genes between males and females. This event is regulated by various factors, and the genes located in the X-chromosome inactivation center (XIC), which is known to be an evolutionary conserved region, are associated with XCI; however, a number of studies ...