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Early stage caprine embryos were incubated with goat oviduct and uterine cells to evaluate whether these cells could be used as a somatic cell culture system to enhance development through the developmental block at the 8- to 16-cell stage during in-vitro culture. Following gonadotrophin treatment and natural mating, 2- to 4-cell embryos were surgically recovered from donor females for in-vitro culture studies. In Experiment 1, embryos were equally and randomly allotted to culture treatments of either culture medium plus caprine oviduct cells or culture medium alone. In both treatment groups, embryos were incubated in Medium-199 with 10% fetal bovine serum, 0.25% lactalbumin and 1% antibiotic-antimycotic at 37 degrees C in a humidified atmosphere of 5% CO2 in air. In Experiment 2, similar embryos were cultured in the same medium with either caprine oviduct cells, caprine uterine cells or sequentially incubated with oviduct cells and then uterine cells during a corresponding incubation interval. The culture conditions in Experiment 2 were the same as in Experiment 1. Following 72 h in culture, (Experiment 1), significantly more embryos developed through the in-vitro developmental block into blastocysts and hatched blastocysts when cultured with oviduct cells compared with no embryos developing through the in-vitro block when incubated with medium alone. In Experiment 2, caprine embryos co-cultured with oviduct cells alone resulted in more embryos developing into blastocysts and hatched blastocysts compared with those co-cultured with uterine cells alone.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

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Early-stage caprine embryos were placed in the chick embryo amnion to determine if this culture method would support the development of embryos from a farm animal species. Following superovulation and natural mating, two- to eight-cell embryos were surgically collected from crossbred donor goats. Embryos were allotted to in vitro culture treatments across two different experiments (EXP). In EXP-I, embryos allotted to Treatment A (control) were cultured in Ham's F-10 with 10% fetal calf serum and 1% antibiotic-antimycotic (HF-10). Embryos in Treatment B were placed on a bovine fetal uterine fibroblast monolayer in HF-10, embryos allotted to Treatment C were agarose embedded and injected into the amniotic cavity of a day-4 chick embryo and those placed in Treatment D were co-cultured in HF-10 with day-15 caprine trophoblastic vesicles. In EXP II Treatments A, B, and C were the same; however Treatment D was omitted. EXP-I and EXP-II also differed in that chick embryo co-culture was for 72 hr in EXP-I but was extended to 96 hours in EXP-II. Additionally, the monolayer co-culture was limited to 96 hr in EXP-II; whereas, embryos in EXP-I remained on monolayer culture for 96 hr plus an additional 72 hr for subsequent embryo evaluation. Results indicate that the amniotic cavity of the developing chick embryo enhanced the development of two- to eight-cell caprine embryos through to hatching blastocysts when compared with that of the control medium alone.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)