title: Evaluation of developmental competence of vitrified-warmed early cleavage stage embryos and their application for chimeric mouse production.
abstract: The developmental competence of in vitro cultured embryos vitrified-warmed at an early cleavage stage (2- or 4, 8-cell stage) was examined by both direct transfer into recipient animals and after in vitro manipulation for chimeric mice production using embryonic stem (ES) cells. Vitrified-warmed embryos transferred at the morulae and blastocyst stages showed fetus development comparable to control embryos, although blastocyst development of vitrified-warmed embryos was significantly slower than that of controls. When vitrified-warmed early cleavage stage embryos were used for chimeric mouse production using ES cells, 1 to 10% of the injected or aggregated embryos developed into chimeric neonates and germ-line chimeric mice were obtained from all ES cell lines. This study indicates that embryos developed in vitro from vitrified-warmed embryos have equivalent competence with unvitrified embryos irrespective of stage of vitrification and that these vitrified-warmed embryos maintain adequate viability even after in vitro manipulation such as aggregation and microinjection with ES cells.
authors.affiliation: National Institute of Radiological Sciences, 4-6-1 Anagawa, Chiba 263-8555, Japan.
authors.forename: Seiji
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Kito
authors.forename: Yoshiko
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Noguchi
authors.forename: Yuki
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Ohta
authors.forename: Tatsuya
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Ohhata
authors.forename: Masumi
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Abe
authors.forename: Naoko
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Shiomi
authors.forename: Tadahiro
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Shiomi
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D002678:Chimera; D004622:Embryo, Mammalian / Q000166:cytology*; D051379:Mice