Mammalian parthenogenesis could not survive but aborted during mid-gestation, presumably because of lack of paternal gene expression. To understand the molecular mechanisms underlying the failure of parthenogenesis at early stages of development, we performed global gene expression profiling and functional analysis of parthenogenetic blastocysts in comparison with those of blastocysts from norm...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate and compare the laboratory and clinical outcomes of vitrification with slow-freezing method for cryopreservation of embryos and blastocysts in an in-vitro fertilisation programme. DESIGN Retrospective analysis of all the 104 cycles of frozen embryo and blastocyst replacements from 2003 to 2008 and all the 149 cycles with embryos or blastocysts for vitrification from 2006...

The expression of XIST, G6PD, HPRT, ZFX and ZFY were investigated in in-vitro produced bovine embryos. Transcripts of these genes were assayed by RT-PCR in pools of pre-compaction stage embryos and sexed pools of morulae and blastocysts. The expression of XIST, G6PD, HPRT and ZFX in female and male morulae and blastocysts were compared using a semi-quantitative RT-PCR. G6PD, HPRT and ZFX transc...

There are significant advantages to the production of gene-knockout mice directly in mouse strains other than 129. The availability now of ES cells derived from the C57BL/6 mouse strain presents workers with a valuable alternative. A major difficulty, however, is the requirement for BALB/c blastocysts as recipients for ES cell injection. Using standard procedures, few BALB/c blastocysts can be ...

The emergence of the mammalian blastocysts from their thick glycoprotein investment known as the zona pellucida is an important, but poorly understood, event in embryogenesis. In this paper, we demonstrate that peri-hatching blastocysts generate a considerably high quantum of an active oxyradical species for an extremely short period of time when compared to the pre-hatching (unhatched) and pos...

Although the rate of blastocysts implantation of embryos is higher than previous stages but their survival rate is lower than them, which could be attributed to the completely filled blastocoel cavity with liquid and increased possibility of the formation of ice crystals. This liquid could prevent the penetration of cryoprotecting materials into the embryos. In this study, we reduced the volume...

BACKGROUND The use of assisted reproductive technology (ART) has been reported to increase the incidence of monozygotic twinning (MZT) compared with the incidence following natural conception. It has been hypothesized that splitting of the inner cell mass (ICM) through a small zona hole may result in MZT. In this study, using a cohort of patients undergoing preimplantation genetic diagnosis/scr...

background: a decrease in aneuploidy rate following a prolonged co-culture of human blastocysts has been reported. as co-culture is not routinely used in assisted reproductive technology, the present study aimed to evaluate the effect of the prolonged single culture on the rate of diploid cells in human embryos with aneuploidies. materials and methods: in this cohort study, we used fluorescence...

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 In order to optimize blastocyst cryopreservation, vitrification was introduced as the routine procedure instead of slow freezing. The outcome of a closed blastocyst vitrification system was evaluated in relation to the blastocyst score before cryopreservation in single embryo transfers (SETs). METHODS Supernumerary blastocysts of IVF/ICSI patients with a fresh Day 5 transfer were v...