Effects of gas conditions, time of medium change, and ratio of medium to embryo on in vitro development of horse oocytes fertilized by intracytoplasmic sperm injection. uri icon

abstract

  • This study was conducted to evaluate the effects of two different gas conditions (5% CO(2) in air or 5% CO(2), 5% O(2), 90% N(2), mixed gas), time of medium change (Day 3 or 4) and ratio of medium to embryo (2, 5 or 10 microl per presumptive zygote) on the development of horse oocytes fertilized by intracytoplasmic sperm injection and cultured in G1.2/2.2 medium. Oocytes from slaughterhouse-derived ovaries were matured in vitro for 24 h and fertilized by injection of frozen-thawed sperm using micromanipulation with a Piezo drill. Presumptive zygotes were randomly assigned to 5% CO(2) in air or mixed gas and fixed after 96 h of culture. Cleavage rates between two gas conditions were similar (67 and 63%), but the mean nucleus number of embryos in the mixed gas treatment was significantly (P<0.05) higher than that of embryos cultured in 5% CO(2) in air (15.2 versus 7.0, respectively). Further experiments were done with mixed gas incubation. Development of embryos was compared after change from G1.2 to G2.2 medium at Day 3 or 4. There was no significant difference in cleavage rate (56 and 65%, respectively) or development to the blastocyst stage after 7 days of culture (5% and 46%, respectively) between embryos changed on different days. To evaluate the effect of the ratio of medium to embryo, zygotes were cultured at a ratio of 2, 5 or 10 microl medium per zygote. There were no significant differences among ratio treatments in rates of cleavage or development to blastocyst.

published proceedings

  • Theriogenology

author list (cited authors)

  • Choi, Y., Love, C. C., Varner, D. D., Love, L. B., & Hinrichs, K.

citation count

  • 23

complete list of authors

  • Choi, Young-Ho||Love, Charles C||Varner, Dickson D||Love, Linda B||Hinrichs, Katrin

publication date

  • January 2003