title: Co-culture of mouse embryos with oviduct and uterine cells prepared from mice at different days of pseudopregnancy.
abstract: Oviduct and uterine cell cultures were prepared from mice at different days of pseudopregnancy and their effects on the development of 1- and 8-cell mouse embryos in co-culture were examined. One-cell mouse embryos in co-culture with oviduct cells from 20 h to 120 h after hCG had a mean (+/- s.e.) cell number of 70.1 +/- 3.6, significantly (P less than 0.001) higher compared with those cultured in Whittingham's T6 medium supplemented with 5% fetal calf serum (T6 + 5% FCS) (30.4 +/- 1.6). Transfer of embryos, at 96 h after hCG, to synchronous pseudopregnant recipients showed that more embryos in oviduct co-culture formed fetuses than those cultured in T6 + 5% FCS. Co-culture of 1-cell embryos with uterine cells did not confer an advantage in cell numbers over T6 + 5% FCS. However, more 8-cell embryos formed blastocyst outgrowths after 100 h in co-culture with uterine cells prepared from mice at Day 3 of pseudopregnancy than with uterine cultures prepared from mice at Day 1 of pseudopregnancy or oviduct cells. In addition, there was further improvement when the Day 3 uterine co-cultures were supplemented with 1 or 10 ng progesterone/ml. These results highlight the importance of the oviduct and uterine cells during the different stages of preimplantation embryo development.
authors.affiliation: Centre for Early Human Development, Monash Medical Centre, Clayton, Victoria, Australia.
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Sakkas
authors.forename: A O
authors.initials: AO
authors.lastname: Trounson
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001755:Blastocyst / Q000502:physiology*; D002455:Cell Division; D002478:Cells, Cultured; D005314:Embryonic and Fetal Development / Q000502:physiology*; D005187:Fallopian Tubes / Q000166:cytology / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D051379:Mice; D008815:Mice, Inbred Strains; D011555:Pseudopregnancy / Q000378:metabolism*; D014599:Uterus / Q000166:cytology / Q000502:physiology*