Two major areas are addressed in this proposal. The first concerns the development of better methods for the culture of mammalian preimplantation embryos, particularly methods which support normal differentiation of the blastocyst in vitro. The inability to successfully culture blastocysts is one of the remaining gaps in our methodology. This methodology is needed to experimentally analyze the early stages of organogenesis in mammals. The main technique to be used will be simplex optimization to find the optimum concentrations of the components of culture solution.
The specific aims are: (1) To test whether optimum concentrations of components in a medium for the culture of preimplantation embryos depend on the response parameter, (2) To devise methods for the optimization of media with large numbers of components, such as 20 amino acids, (3) To obtain evidence that preimplantation embryos contain small organic molecules that act as osmolytes, and (4) To examine whether the response to growth factors is dependent on the background provided by other components of the medium. The second area concerns the construction of efficient ways of producing non-human mature oocytes in vitro. Studies of preimplantation development in primates are limited by the small number of embryos that can be produced by conventional means. In biotechnology the production of transgenic primates will be severely hampered by this problem. An alternative approach is to tap the large store of oocytes in the ovary by culture methods to produce large numbers of mature oocytes for fertilization in vitro.
The specific aims are: (1) To assemble a database on relevant properties of viable rhesus and tamarin follicles and oocytes that can be recovered from animals of different ages, (2) To construct culture conditions which support the development of granulosa cell enclosed oocytes obtained from rhesus and tamarin antral follicles to the fertilizable mataphase II state, and (3) To construct culture conditions which support the development of oocytes in preantral follicles obtained from rhesus and tamarin ovaries to the fertilizable metaphase II state.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development (NICHD)
Type
Research Project--Cooperative Agreements (U01)
Project #
5U01HD021988-08
Application #
3552547
Study Section
Special Emphasis Panel (SRC (12))
Project Start
1986-09-01
Project End
1996-08-31
Budget Start
1992-09-01
Budget End
1993-08-31
Support Year
8
Fiscal Year
1992
Total Cost
Indirect Cost
Name
Harvard University
Department
Type
Schools of Medicine
DUNS #
082359691
City
Boston
State
MA
Country
United States
Zip Code
02115
Erbach, Gregory T; Biggers, John D; Manning, Peter C et al. (2013) Localization of parathyroid hormone-related protein in the preimplantation mouse embryo is associated with events of blastocyst hatching. J Assist Reprod Genet 30:1009-15
Biggers, J D; McGinnis, L K (2001) Evidence that glucose is not always an inhibitor of mouse preimplantation development in vitro. Hum Reprod 16:153-163
Biggers, J D; McGinnis, L K; Raffin, M (2000) Amino acids and preimplantation development of the mouse in protein-free potassium simplex optimized medium. Biol Reprod 63:281-93
Summers, M C; McGinnis, L K; Lawitts, J A et al. (2000) IVF of mouse ova in a simplex optimized medium supplemented with amino acids. Hum Reprod 15:1791-801
Nowak, R A; Haimovici, F; Biggers, J D et al. (1999) Transforming growth factor-beta stimulates mouse blastocyst outgrowth through a mechanism involving parathyroid hormone-related protein. Biol Reprod 60:85-93
Biggers, J D; Summers, M C; McGinnis, L K (1997) Polyvinyl alcohol and amino acids as substitutes for bovine serum albumin in culture media for mouse preimplantation embryos. Hum Reprod Update 3:125-35
Younis, A I; Toner, M; Albertini, D F et al. (1996) Cryobiology of non-human primate oocytes. Hum Reprod 11:156-65
Erbach, G T; Bhatnagar, P; Baltz, J M et al. (1995) Zinc is a possible toxic contaminant of silicone oil in microdrop cultures of preimplantation mouse embryos. Hum Reprod 10:3248-54
Johnson, L D; Albertini, D F; McGinnis, L K et al. (1995) Chromatin organization, meiotic status and meiotic competence acquisition in mouse oocytes from cultured ovarian follicles. J Reprod Fertil 104:277-84
Feldman, B; Poueymirou, W; Papaioannou, V E et al. (1995) Requirement of FGF-4 for postimplantation mouse development. Science 267:246-9

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