Effect of mesenchymal stem cells co-culture on preimplantation development of cloned bovine embryos

Abstract

Somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) is the technique to produce cloned animals with numerous potential applications in medicine and agriculture, however the success rate is very low. Therefore, the co-culture method having some beneficial impacts on embryonic development was used. Considering stem cells emit a variety of growth factors and offer an appropriate cellular environment, in this study the effect of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) co-culture on the development of cloned bovine embryos during preimplantation has been studied. In the first experiment, created cloned embryos obtained from TSA and SCR treatment step were conducted in 3 different groups including culture without MSCs (control), co-culture with 5 MSCs, and with 10 MSCs, particularly 5-10 embryos/ 20µL co-culture drop. The result indicated that co-culture with 5 MSCs reached the highest rate of cloned bovine embryos developed to the blastocyst stage (42%) compared to group of co-culture with 10 MSCs (29%) and a control group (21%). The second experiment included that yielded blastocysts of 3 groups were stained by DAPI to examine the total cell number. In comparison, the 5 MSCs co-culture group resulted in the highest total number of cells. Taking together, these outcomes concluded that co-culturing cloned bovine embryos with 5 MSCs improved blastocyst development proportion as well as increased the total number of blastomeres at the blastocyst stage.