Comparison of the Extent of DNA Damage in Rat Embryos Developed in vivo and in vitro

Abstract

This study investigated the use of the comet assay to assess DNA damage in individual preimplantation rat embryos, and compared with the extent of DNA damage in the embryos developed between in vivo and in vitro. The embryos developed in vivo from 2-cell to the blastocyst stages were recovered from oviducts or uterus. The embryos developed in vitro were obtained by culturing from 2-cell stage embryos in a chemically defined medium under an atmosphere of 5% CO2 in air. The comet assay could be readily detected the DNA damage in individual embryos. The extent of DNA damage in the cultured embryos significantly increased with the developmental stages, compared with the embryos developed in vivo (P<0.05). These results indicate that the comet assay is useful for the assessment of the normality of the developed embryos and the culture system of rat embryos in this study would be required to improve for better embryonic viability.