introduction: this study was started to improve in vitro blastocyst development and avoiding of blastocyst collapsment (no visibie cavity, returning of hatching blastocyst into zona pellucida, and tendency to degeneration). materials and methods: 24hrs one - cell mouse embryos were recovered from positive plug females and cultured in following canditions: experiments 1,2: during first 48hrs nmr...

The establishment of in vitro fertilization and culture systems for mammalian embryos has facilitated the application of embryo technologies in research, industry, and clinical settings. Furthermore, the advent of cloning by nuclear transfer has significantly enhanced the potential for genetic modification of livestock. Based on studies in cattle, sheep, and mice, it has become apparent that em...

Mechanism underlying mammalian preimplantation development has long been a subject of controversy and the central question has been if any "determinants" play a key role in a manner comparable to the non-mammalian "model" system. During the last decade, this issue has been revived (Pearson, 2002; Rossant and Tam, 2004) by claims that the axes of the mouse blastocyst are anticipated at the egg (...

Soluble proteins were studied in the developing rabbit blastocyst by using a micro-disc electrophoresis technique. The tissues of the blastocyst (in later stages separated into the embryoblastic and trophoblastic parts) were analysed, and their protein patterns were compared with those of uterine secretion and blastocyst fluid. A protein pattern with more than 20 protein fractions was found in ...

abstractl-carnitine (lc) is an antioxidant with the ability to promote the growth in vitro embryo.objective: the goal was to evaluate the effect of lc on some indicators of embryo development and blastocyst quality including zona pellucid (zp) thickness, the hatching of blastocysts and their cell numbers.materials and methods: mouse embryos were randomly divided into five groups and incubated w...

BACKGROUND The selection of blastocyst warmed for transfer is based on pre-freeze morphology in vitrified-warmed single blastocyst transfer cycles. But, it is controversial which parameter of blastocyst morphology most closely related to the clinical outcomes. OBJECTIVE To estimate the effect of blastocoele expansion, trophectoderm (TE) morphology grade, and inner cell mass (ICM) morphology g...

The aim of this study was to determine the effect of additional alpha-linolenic acid (ALA) supplementation during in vitro maturation (IVM) and culture (IVC) on nucleic maturation and embryo development of pigs. Cumulus-oocyte complexes (COCs) were incubated in IVM medium containing different concentration of ALA (25, 50 and 100 μM) for 44 h. After in vitro maturation, nuclear maturation of ooc...

Enzyme-catalyzed, post-translational modifications of core histones have been implicated in the complex changes in gene expression that drive early mammalian development. However, until recently the small number of cells available from the preimplantation embryo itself has prevented quantitative analysis of histone modifications at key regulator genes. The possible involvement of histone modifi...

BACKGROUND Early embryo development (EED) forms the basis of assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs), which are used to treat human infertility and to propagate other mammalian species. Thyroid hormones (THs) play an important role in the post-implantation development of the embryo in mammals; however, the effects of THs on pre-attachment embryos are not known. Currently utilized in-vitro emb...

Although in most species the polarity of the embryo takes its roots from the spatial patterning of the egg, mammals were viewed as an exception. This was because the anteroposterior polarity of the mouse embryo could not be seen until gastrulation, and no developmental cues were known that could define polarity at earlier stages. Why should we now re-consider this view? While mechanisms of axis...