Effect of co-culture with intact embryos on development of bovine separated blastomeres.

To improve embryo development in bovine separated blastomeres, we evaluated applicability of co-culture with intact embryos. The morphological quality of blastocysts derived from separated blastomeres and rate of blastocyst formation were only slightly increased when the cells were co-cultured with intact embryos, which did not provide significant differences when statistically analyzed. However, the cell count of inner cell mass (ICM), trophectoderm (TE) and total number of cells in Day 8 blastocysts were significantly higher when the cells were co-cultured with the intact embryos than those with the cells cultured individually (P<0.