Mdivi-1, mitochondrial fission inhibitor, impairs developmental competence and mitochondrial function of embryos and cells in pigs.

Mitochondria are highly dynamic organelles that undergo constant fusion/fission as well as activities orchestrated by large dynamin-related GTPases. These dynamic mitochondrial processes influence mitochondrial morphology, size and function. Therefore, this study was conducted to evaluate the effects of mitochondrial fission inhibitor, mdivi-1, on developmental competence and mitochondrial function of porcine embryos and primary cells.

Exogenous γ-tocotrienol promotes preimplantation development and improves the quality of porcine embryos.

γ-tocotrienol (GTT), an isomer of vitamin E, has been the subject of increasing interest due to its strong anti-oxidant effects. Therefore, in this study, the effects of GTT on blastocyst development, expression levels of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and apoptotic index were investigated in preimplantation porcine embryos. After in vitro maturation and fertilisation, porcine embryos were cultured for 6 days in porcine zygote medium 3 supplemented with or without GTT (200μM) under oxidative stress conditions (200μM hydrogen peroxide (H2O2)).

A cathepsin B inhibitor, E-64, improves the preimplantation development of bovine somatic cell nuclear transfer embryos.

Bovine somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) is an important and powerful tool for basic research and biomedical and agricultural applications, however, the efficiency of SCNT has remained extremely low. In this study, we investigated the effects of cathepsin B inhibitor (E-64) supplementation of culture medium on in vitro development of bovine SCNT embryos. We initially used three concentrations of E-64 (0.

Forced collapse of the blastocoel enhances survival of cryotop vitrified bovine hatching/hatched blastocysts derived from in vitro fertilization and somatic cell nuclear transfer.

Freezing of bovine blastocysts has been widely used to improve the feasibility of cattle production by the embryo transfer technique. However, the low survival of vitrified-warmed embryos and their further development are crucial problems. Particularly, the production of offspring in vitrified-warmed bovine hatching/hatched blastocysts derived from in vitro fertilization (IVF) and somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) is very low.