Improved development of head-fold rat embryos in culture resulting from low oxygen and modifications of the culture serum

Abstract

Previous work has shown that rat embryos can be grown in culture for periods of 1–3 days at any time during the 2nd week of gestation, i.e. throughout the period of major organogenesis. The cultured embryos undergo extensive growth and differentiation, and many of them compare well with embryos of equivalent age in vivo. But the rate of growth, as determined by assays of total protein, has usually been found to be lower than in vivo (Berry, 1968; Shepard, Tanimura & Robkin, 1970; Payne & Deuchar, 1972; Robkin, Shepard & Tanimura, 1972; New, 1973; Cockroft, 1973, 1976; Steele, 1975) and a higher proportion of the embryos show malformations (Morriss & Steele, 1974).