WHOLE-EMBRYO CULTURE AND THE STUDY OF POSTIMPLANTATION MAMMALIAN DEVELOPMENT

In the past decade, striking advances have been made in the field of g ene introducing/disrupting technology including generation of transgen ic and knockout mice, which have enabled us to elucidate roles of spec ific genes in development. In this technology, embryos introduced with exogenous genes or chimeric embryos aggregated/injected with embryoni c stem (ES) cells carrying targeted genes are allowed to develop in th e uterus of foster mothers. The uterus, however, is like a black box f or researchers investigating postimplantation development of mammalian embryos. Embryo culture is one of the powerful techniques that can op en this black box. In this review, we focus on the applicable aspects of the whole embryo culture in the study of mammalian development and discuss the future possibilities of this technique.