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...

The POU (Pit-Oct-Unc)-domain transcription factor, Oct-4, has become a useful marker of pluripotency in the mouse. It is found exclusively in mouse preimplantation-stage embryos after embryonic genome activation and is a characteristic of mouse embryonic stem (ES) cells, and its absence in knockout mice precludes inner cell mass (ICM) formation in blastocysts. Expression of Oct-4 has also been ...

The aim of this study was to compare the expression of selected genes in bovine embryos developed from oocytes with different developmental competence. Four oocyte populations were collected, separately either from small (2-5 mm) or medium (6-10 mm) follicles, in the growth/stagnation (G/S) or dominance/regression (D/R) stage of the first follicular wave. They were matured, fertilized and cultu...

About 1-3 % of mouse blastocysts, which had initially been cultured from the two-cell stage in chemically defined medium or about 3-5 % of blastocysts which were explanted from the uterus, developed to the early somite stage when cultured in vitro on collagen. Twocell eggs were initially cultivated in chemically defined medium to the blastocyst stage. Blastocysts were then transferred to Eagle'...

We have explanted mouse blastocysts into culture dishes and studies the positioning of the inner cell mass (ICM) at the time of attachment in order to establish what effect the location of the inner cell mass has on the subsequent development of embryos in vitro. We show that blastocysts may attach to the substrate with any portion of the trophectoderm. The location of ICM within the attaching ...

BACKGROUND This study was designed to examine the cytotoxic effect of retinoic acid on the blastocyst stage of mouse embryos and on subsequent early postimplantation embryo development in vitro. METHODS AND RESULTS Mouse blastocysts were exposed for 24 h to doses of 0, 0.1 micromol/l and 10 micromol/l all-trans retinoic acid and observed for their capacity to implant and develop during the ea...

Cryopreservation and sexing of embryos are integrated into commercial embryo transfer technologies. To improve the effectiveness of vitrification of in vitro produced buffalo embryos, two experiments were conducted. The first evaluated the effect of exposure time (2 and 3 min) and developmental stage (morula and blastocysts) on the viability and development of vitrified buffalo embryos. Morphol...

BACKGROUND Fresh embryo transfer results in higher live birth rates, while thawed embryo transfer appears to result in healthier babies. This study aims to investigate the association between the transfer of fresh or thawed embryos at the cleavage or blastocyst stage and the perinatal outcomes. METHODS This analysis is a retrospective population-based study of 150 376 autologous embryo transf...

To study the effect of partial removal of intracytoplasmatic lipids from bovine zygotes on their in vitro and in vivo survival, presumptive zygotes were delipidated by micromanipulation and cocultured with Vero cells in B2+10% FCS. Blastocyst rates of delipidated (n=960), sham (centrifuged but not delipidated, n=830) and control embryos (n=950) were 42.1, 42.3 and 39.9% respectively (P > 0.05)....

The production of cloned animals is an inefficient process because of early or late embryonic losses. This study focused on the DNA fragmentation that occurs during embryonic development. The occurrence of DNA fragmentation was examined in bovine embryos produced by in vitro fertilization (IVF) and somatic cell nuclear transfer (NT) using the terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase (TdT) nick-end...