Abstract
In the present work, we evaluated the effect on further in vitro embryo development of inserting rabbit adult fibroblasts into in vivo–fertilized rabbit embryos. To this end, we inserted either 4 or 15–20 rabbit adult fibroblasts in two different early embryo stages of development, 1-cell stage and 4–8-cell stage embryos. We observed that fibroblast insertion not only did not negatively affect further embryo development, but also may have exerted a positive effect on development on it. Therefore, in forthcoming works were where we intend to study a possible cell helper role on early embryo development. The early embryo microenvironment may reprogram somatic cell gene expression of fibroblasts inserted within the embryo, making them suitable as nuclear donors.
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