Systematic analysis of the factors that adversely affect the rate of cell accumulation in mouse embryos during their culture in vitro

Background: Retarded embryo growth is a pervasive effect of culture in vitro. Methods: A systematic analysis of the interactions between media design, embryo culture density, oxygen tension, amino acids, trophic ligands and the genetic background of the mouse on embryo growth rates in vitro was performed. Results: Growth retardation of mouse zygotes was greater in 20% O-2 than 5%, a sequential media design was superior to static simple media designs, but the supplementation of simple media with mixed amino acids mitigated this difference. There was a beneficial effect of communal culture in small volumes, and supplementation with a trophic ligand (Paf) further enhanced growth rates. For hybrid strain zygotes (B6CBF1) communal culture in KSOM media supplemented with amino acids, albumin and Paf under 5% O-2 resulted in complete rescue of their rate of accumulation of cells and blastocyst formation. Inbred strain (C57BL6/J) zygotes, however, still showed some retardation of development under these conditions. The additional supplementation of media with another trophic ligand (IGF1) showed a further additive beneficial effect on development of inbred strain embryos but they still showed a growth deficit of similar to 23% cell number. The results show that optimising the interactions between a range of culture conditions and media design can rescue hybrid strain embryos from a retarded rate of cell proliferation caused by culture in vitro, but this was incomplete for the B6 strain. Conclusions: The results indicate that the growth requirement of embryos in vitro varies depending upon their genetic background and provide models for the further genetic analysis of embryo growth.