Abstract
This study was conducted to determine whether meiotic maturation could be induced in ovarian oocytes from the American brown bear (Ursus arctos), a model for gamete "rescue" techniques for endangered ursids. The bears were euthanized, and their ovaries were transported to the laboratory within 4 h. The mean ovarian size was 2.4 × 1.8 cm (range: 2.0-3.3 × 1.5-2.2 cm). The ovaries obtained from the 2 brown bears yielded 97 oocytes (48.5/female), and 88 (90.7%) of them were morphologically classified as normal quality. Oocytes were in vitro matured at 38.5 C in 5% CO2 for 24 or 48 h in TCM-199 supplemented with 10% FBS, 1 μg/ml estradiol-17β, and 10 μg/ml FSH. In Exp. 1, morphologic evaluation of matured oocytes was conducted by measuring the diameters of oocytes with a zona pellucida (ZP) or cytoplasm without a ZP. In Exp. 2, activation was induced by applying two 20 μsec DC pulses of 2.0 kV/cm delivered by an Electro Cell Fusion Generator. The activated oocytes were cultured in TCM-199 containing 2 mM of 6-dimethylaminopurine for 4 h, in Charles Rosenkrans (CR) 1 for 3 days and the in CR2 for another 4 days. The diameters of the matured bear oocytes with a ZP and with cytoplasm without a ZP (161.8 ± 6.0 and 135.3 ± 7.5 μm, respectively) were significantly (P<0.05) larger than those of bovine oocytes (150.7 ± 4.9 and 118.7 ± 7.5 μm). The maturation rates of the bear oocytes were 17.6 and 59.4% at 24 and 48 h of in vitro maturation, the percentage of activated oocytes that developed to the 2 or 4-cell stage was 31.6%; however, no blastocysts were observed. These results indicate that bear oocytes can develop to metaphase II in an in vitro culture system and that activated oocytes can develop to the 2 or 4-cell stages.
