Boric Acid Improved Cryopreserved Mouse Embryo Development.

Boric acid (BA) is an essential trace element that is required to support the metabolic pathways in plants, humans, and animals. The present study investigates the in vitro development and quality of single-cell mouse embryos in a BA-added culture medium after cryopreservation using the solid-surface vitrification method. For this purpose, the pronuclear-stage embryos derived from superovulated C57Bl/6j mouse strains and the one-cell embryos were then cryopreserved using the solid-surface vitrification (SSV) method. After thawing, the embryos were cultured in a BA-added medium at 37 °C in a 5% CO2 environment until the blastocyst stage. The resulting in vitro development rates of the embryos in the control group, SSV group, and SSV + 1.62 × 10-4 µM BA group were 68.11% (36/59), 40.16% (16/48), and 64.92% (28/48) respectively, indicating that the BA supported the in vitro development of the embryos cryopreserved using the SSV method. Our results suggest that the addition of boric acid to the culture media increased the development rate of the embryos that were vitrified using the SSV method.

Treatment with Melatonin Enhances the Embryo Quality and the Development of Vitrified/warmed Eight Cell Mouse Embryos by Solid Surface Vitrification (SSV).

BACKGROUND: Melatonin is an endocrine hormone secreted from the pineal gland located outside the blood-brain barrier. OBJECTIVE: In this study, in vitro propagated eight-cell mouse embryos were vitrified by the Solid Surface Vitrification (SSV) method and after thawing, their in vitro development and embryo qualities in melatonin added media were investigated. METHODS: Pronuclear stage embryos obtained from super ovulated B6CBAF1/J strain mice, were cultured until the eight-cell stage. Then these eight-cell embryos were vitrified by the SSV method and after thawing, cultured in melatonin added media at 37°C and 5 %CO2 conditions until the blastocyst stage. RESULT: In the experimental period, in vitro embryo development rates of the control, SSV and +10-12 M melatonin groups were observed as 97%, 86% and 93%, respectively. CONCLUSION: Our results indicated that melatonin addition slightly increased the development rates and total cell numbers of embryos vitrified by the SSV method.