The effect of all-trans retinol on in vitro mouse embryo'sdevelopmental competence

BACKGROUND: All-trans retinol is a biological antioxidant scavenging the ROS in the cell culture. OBJECTIVES: This study was conducted to investigate the effect of all-trans retinol in fertilization and culture medium on mouse embryo's developmental competence. METHODS: This study was designed into two experiments. In the first experiment, in vitro mature oocytes were co-cultured with sperm in fertilization medium containing different concentrations of all-trans retinol (0, 1, 5, and 10 μM). After fertilization, zygotes in each group were separately cultured in CZB culture medium for 5 days to the blastocyst stage. In the second experiment, in vitro produced zygotes were cultured in CZB culture medium containing different concentrations of all-trans retinol (0, 1, 5, and 10 μM) for 5 days to the blastocyst stage. RESULTS: In the first experiment, the blastocyst formation rate significantly increased by 5 μM in all-trans retinol, which was more than those of the other groups. Also, percentage of grade one embryos was significantly higher in the presence of 5 μM all-trans retinol than those in the presence of 0 and 1 μM all-trans retinol. In the secondexperiment, different concentrations of all-trans retinol could not alter blastocyst formation rate; however, the percentage of grade one embryo was higher in the presence of 10 μM all-trans retinol than that of the control group. CONCLUSIONS: These results showed that supplementation of fertilization medium with 5 μM alltransretinol could improve mouse embryo's development and morphology. On the other hand, supplementation of embryo culture medium can improve mouse embryo morphology without any effect on embryo developmental competence

کلیدواژه ها:

development ، fertilization ، mouse ، oocyte ، retinol