ALPHA-MINIMUM ESSENTIAL MEDIUM (MEM) ENHANCES IN-VITRO HATCHED BLASTOCYST DEVELOPMENT AND CELL NUMBER PER EMBRYO OVER HAMS F-10

Problem: The development of mouse embryos in vitro is affected primari ly by mouse strain-genotype and culture conditions. Embryo culture stu dies evaluate the effectiveness of culture conditions in supporting on e- or two-cell mouse embryo development to the blastocyst stage by rep orting the percentage blastocyst formation rate. Method: Determining t he cell number per cultured blastocyst may also help in determining em bryo culture medium quality. The objective of this study was to determ ine the effect of MEM and Ham's F-10 on overall CFW mouse embryo devel opment and hatched blastocyst cell number in vitro. CFW embryos cultur ed in MEM had significantly higher (87%; P < 0.001) hatched blastocyst rates than embryos cultured in F-10 (56%). Results: A significant dif ference in nuclei per hatched blastocyst was found between MEM and F-1 0 (P < 0.001). The results demonstrate that inbred mouse embryos have significantly higher blastocyst hatching rates and higher cell numbers per blastocyst when cultured in MEM.