Improved development of DNA-injected bovine embryos co-cultured with mouse embryonic fibroblast cells

The in vitro development of DNA-injected bovine zygotes, produced in vitro, was compared when cultured with or without mouse embryonic fibroblasts (MEF). The in vivo viability of the embryos produced in these in vitro culture systems was assessed by single or double transfer to recipients taken to term. For these experiments, in vitro fertilized oocytes were not injected (Experiment 1) or were injected with pBL1 gene (Experiment 2) and then cultured for 2 days in CR1aa medium supplemented with 3 mg/ml BSA at 38.5 degrees C in a humidified atmosphere of 5% CO(2) in air. Embryos that developed to the 4- to 8-cell stage at the end of this period were randomly assigned to the two cultured systems and cultured for a further 5 days in groups of 10 to 15 embryos in 0.75 ml medium. These two culture systems were CR1aa medium alone or co-culture with MEF in CR1aa medium supplemented with 10% fetal bovine serum (FBS). Every 48 h, 0.5 ml of the medium was replaced with fresh CR1aa medium and at Day 5 of culture, both media were supplemented by the addition of 5.56 mM glucose and 1x GMS-X supplement solutions. Results were assessed as morphological development of the embryos and data were analyzed by Chi-square test or Student's t-test. The development rate of in vitro fertilization (IVF)-derived embryos co-cultured with MEF (24.4%, 49/201) was significantly higher than those cultured alone (14.4%, 28/194; P<0.05) in Experiment 1. There was a similar difference between the treatments in the proportions of embryos which reached the hatching stage or hatched (10.9%, 22/201 vs. 4.1%, 8/194, respectively; P<0.05). DNA-injected embryos co-cultured with MEF (13.7%, 28/205) showed a higher developmental rate than that of the embryos cultured without MEF (6.7%, 13/193; P<0.05) in Experiment 2. Following the transfer to recipients of one or two DNA-injected blastocysts, the pregnancy rates for two culture systems were similar (MEF co-culture 27.4%, 23/84; CR1aa culture 24. 2%, 16/66). However, the numbers of calves born alive from these pregnancies were higher on the MEF co-culture group (82.6%, 19/23) than the CR1aa culture group (56.2%, 9/16). It was concluded that in vitro embryo development to the blastocyst stage and subsequent in vivo development to term of DNA-injected bovine embryos was improved in comparison to culture in CR1aa alone when the last 5 days of in vitro culture were in a MEF co-culture system.