Culture medium preferences of pre-implantation cloned mouse embryos

Somatic cloning technology involves the transfer of a somatic cell nucleus into an enucleated oocyte, followed by activation and in vitro culture. Efficiency in terms of live offspring generally remains very low. Little attention has been devoted so far to the impact of culture environment on cloned embryo development. Failure of genomic reprogramming of the donor nucleus in nuclear transfer (NT) experiments could lead to an altered phenotype in these cloned embryos that could be manifested by different medium preferences of the NT embryos. We describe here the application of sequential culture media to support preimplantation development of mouse embryos reconstructed using conventional NT techniques. Embryo-quality analysis was performed on NT blastocysts obtained. Additionally, NT embryos that arrested during development also were analyzed.