1993 Volume 14 Issue Supplement Pages 541-544
The purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of low-power laser irradiations on the development of mouse embryos in vitro. We examined the percentage of the development up to the blastocyst stage of mouse embryos which were irradiated by various wavelengths and energy densities. The 1-cell mouse embryos superovulated from ICR female mice were cultured in BWW medium of 37°C under 5% CO2 containing air. The energy densities which applied to the 1-cell mouse embryos were set to 1, 10, 100 and 500 kJ/m2. Each energy density corresponded to 0.05, 0.5, 5 and 20 folding to the actual light dose by microscope light source during in vitro fertilization (IVF). We used three kinds of irradiations of which wavelengths were located in the spectrum of the microscope light source. A red He-Ne laser with 632.8 nm radiation, the green He-Ne laser with 543 nm radiation and blue He-Cd laser with 442 nm radiation were employed for the light source. In case of 632.8 nm radiation with the energy density of 500 kJ/m2, the percentage of blastocyst was markedly suppressed to 3.1% comparing to 25.0% of the control. While the embryos which were irradiated below the energy density of 100 kJ/m2 did not show any inhibitory effect on their developments. In case of 543 nm and 442 nm radiations, no influence were observed in embryo development. These results suggest that light environment might affect on the development of mouse embryos.
