Retinol improves bovine embryonic development in vitro
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BioMed Central
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Retinol improves bovine embryonic development in vitro Tracy Livingston1, Dawn Eberhardt2, J Lannett Edwards3 and James Godkin*3 Address: 1Department of Biology, Georgetown College, Georgetown, KY 40324 USA, 2AviGenics, Inc., 111 Riverbend Road, Athens, GA 30605 USA and 3Department of Animal Science, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 37996 USA Email: Tracy Livingston - [email protected]; Dawn Eberhardt - [email protected]; J Lannett Edwards - [email protected]; James Godkin* - [email protected] * Corresponding author
Published: 21 December 2004 Reproductive Biology and Endocrinology 2004, 2:83
doi:10.1186/1477-7827-2-83
Received: 15 October 2004 Accepted: 21 December 2004
This article is available from: http://www.rbej.com/content/2/1/83 © 2004 Livingston et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract Retinoids are recognized as important regulators of vertebrate development, cell differentiation, and tissue function. Previous studies, performed both in vivo and in vitro, indicate that retinoids influence several reproductive events, including follicular development, oocyte maturation and early embryonic development. The present study evaluated in vitro effects of retinol addition to media containing maturing bovine oocytes and developing embryos in both a low oxygen atmosphere (7%) and under atmospheric oxygen conditions (20%). In the first experiment, abbatoir collected bovine oocytes were matured in the presence or absence of varying concentrations of retinol. After a 22–24 hour maturation period the oocytes were fertilized, denuded 18 hours later and cultured in a modified synthetic oviductal fluid (mSOF) in a humidified atmosphere at 38.5 degrees C, 5% CO2, 7% O2 and 88% N2. Cleavage rates did not differ among control and retinoltreated oocytes in all three experiments. Addition of 5 micromolar retinol to the maturation medium (IVM) tended (p < 0.07) to increase blastocyst formation (blastocyst/putative zygote; 26.1% +/- 2.2%) compared to the controls (21.9% +/- 1.9%). Further analysis revealed when blastocyst development rates fell below 20% in the control groups, 5 micromolar retinol treatment dramatically improved embryonic development, measured by blastocyst/putative zygote rate (14.4 +/- 2.1 vs 23.7 +/- 2.5; p < 0.02). The 5 micomolar retinol treatment also enhanced the blastocyst/ cleaved rate by nearly 10% (23.7% vs 34.6%; p < 0.02). In the second and third experiments addition of 5 micromolar retinol to the embryo culture medium (IVC) under low oxygen conditions did not significantly improve cleavage or blastocyst rates, but 5 micromolar retinol significantly increased blastocyst development under 20% O2 conditions (p < 0.001). These studies demonstrate that supple
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