1995 Volume 12 Issue 1 Pages 15-21
Present experiments were carried out to evaluate positive effects of growth factors and conditioned medium (CM) from bovine granulosa cells (BGC) in a defined medium on bovine embryo development. In Experiment 1, insulin (19%; blastocyst / oocytes examined) and basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF; 14%) individually stimulated embryonic development to blastocyst stage in a defined medium as effective as serum did (15%; p>0.05), but neither bovine lipoprotein (LP; 3%) nor bovine serum albumin (BSA; 1%) affected the stimulation of embryo development. In Experiment 2, denuded embryos did not traverse beyond 8- to 16-cell block without the co-culture with BGC, regardless of the addition of insulin and bFGF. In Experiment 3, serum-free, CM of BGC in the presence of insulin stimulated blastocyst formation (11%) as well as co-culture system (18%). These results suggest that insulin and bFGF stimulate early bovine embryonic development through the action of a certain embryotrophic factor produced by the activation of the physiological function of BGC.
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