Divergent selection for in vitro developmental capacity of preimplantation mouse embryos.
Replicated divergent selection was conducted for two generations in ICR mice for in vitro developmental capacity (IVDC; percentage of fertilized one-cell zygotes developing to blastocysts in vitro per female donor). Realized heritabilities based on high and low selection were 0.03±0.08 and -0.11±0.09 in replicate 1, and 0.10±0.11 and 0.08±0.10 in replicate 2. No differences were detected between selection lines (P>0.2) or replicates (P>0.1). Estimate of heritability in the base population based on 332 daughter-dam pairs was 0.14±0.18. These results indicate that additive genetic variance contributes little to the phenotypic variance in this trait. Considerable phenotypic variation in IVDC was observed (mean=49.3; SD=31.0), with a range of IVDC from 0%-100%. Utilization of donor female as a blocking factor is suggested for designs of experiments with preimplantation embryos to increase precision and power of statistical analyses.
Department of Meat and Animal Science, University of Wisconsin, 53706, Madison, WI, USA.
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Critser
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Rutledge