dc.description.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. | en_US |