PRESERVATION OF OOCYTE AND GRANULOSA-CELL MORPHOLOGY IN BOVINE PREANTRAL FOLLICLES CULTURED IN-VITRO

Described in the present paper is a culture system that preserves oocy te and granulosa cell morphology in bovine preantral follicles during 5 d in vitro. The effects of additional hypoxanthine and energy substr ata (i.e., pyruvate and glutamine) on the morphology of cultured prean tral follicles were investigated. It was shown that addition of a mixt ure of pyruvate, glutamine and hypoxantine to the culture medium incre ased the percentage of follicles with an intact oocyte from 29.4 to 78 .6%. Morphological criteria are described to discriminate between norm al and degenerated preantral follicles during culture by inverted micr oscopy. In addition, the importance of histological evaluation to judg e the quality of oocyte and granulosa cells is demonstrated.