Advances in tissue engineering for cardiac regenerative medicine require cellular-level understanding of the mechanism of cardiac muscle growth during embryonic developmental stage. Computational methods to automatize cell segmentation in 3D and deliver accurate, quantitative morphology of cardiomyocytes, are imperative to provide insight into cell behavior underlying cardiac tissue growth. Detecting individual cells from volumetric images of dense tissue, poised with low signal-to-noise ratio and severe intensity in homogeneity, is a challenging task. In this article, we develop a robust segmentation tool capable of extracting cellular morphological parameters from 3D multifluorescence images of murine heart, captured via light-sheet microscopy. The proposed pipeline incorporates a neural network for 2D detection of nuclei and cell membranes. A graph-based global association employs the 2D nuclei detections to reconstruct 3D nuclei. A novel optimization embedding the network flow algorithm in an alternating direction method of multipliers is proposed to solve the global object association problem. The associated 3D nuclei serve as the initialization of an active mesh model to obtain the 3D segmentation of individual myocardial cells. The efficiency of our method over the state-of-the-art methods is observed via various qualitative and quantitative evaluation.

Intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) is a technique commonly used in clinical and research settings. In mouse oocytes, conventional ICSI has a poor survival rate caused by a high level of lysis. Cytochalasin B (CB) is a toxic microfilament-inhibiting agent that is known to relax the cytoskeleton and enhance the flexibility of oocytes. CB has been used widely in nuclear transfer experiments to improve the success rate of the micromanipulation, however information describing the use of CB in ICSI is limited. Here, we demonstrated that the addition of 5 μg/ml CB to the manipulation medium of ICSI procedure significantly improved the survival rate of the ICSI embryos (80.74% vs. 89.50%, p < 0.05), and that there was no harm for the in vitro or in vivo development. The birth rates and birth weights were not significantly different between the CB-treated and -untreated groups. Interestingly, the microfilaments of the ICSI embryos were almost undetectable immediately after CB treatment; however, they gradually re-appeared and had fully recovered to the normal level 2 h later. Moreover, CB did not disturb spindle rotation, second polar body formation or pronuclei migration, and had no effect on the microtubules. We thus conclude that ICSI manipulation in CB-containing medium results in significantly improved survival rate of mouse ICSI embryos, and that short-term treatment with CB during ICSI manipulation does not have adverse effects on the development of ICSI embryos.

Interspecies intracytoplasmic sperm injection has been carried out to understand species-specific differences in oocyte environments and sperm components during fertilization. While sperm aster organization during cat fertilization requires a paternally derived centriole, mouse and hamster fertilization occur within the maternal centrosomal components. To address the questions of where sperm aster assembly occurs and whether complete fertilization is achieved in cat oocytes by interspecies sperm, we studied the fertilization processes of cat oocytes following the injection of cat, mouse, or hamster sperm. Male and female pronuclear formations were not different in the cat oocytes at 6 h following cat, mouse or hamster sperm injection. Microtubule asters were seen in all oocytes following intracytoplasmic injection of cat, mouse or hamster sperm. Immunocytochemical staining with a histone H3-m2K9 antibody revealed that mouse sperm chromatin is incorporated normally with cat egg chromatin, and that the cat eggs fertilized with mouse sperm enter metaphase and become normal 2-cell stage embryos. These results suggest that sperm aster formation is maternally dependent, and that fertilization processes and cleavage occur in a non-species specific manner in cat oocytes.

Rat hepatoma Reuber H-35 cells produce a unique compound designated as Fr.B-25, a 2-cell stage-specific inhibitor of the cleavage of preimplantation mouse embryos cultured in vitro. Here, we identified Fr.B-25 as a purine nucleoside, 5′-deoxy-5′-methylthioadenosine (MTA), by mass spectroscopic analysis. All of the biological activities examined of authentic MTA on the development of mouse zygotes were indistinguishable from those of Fr.B-25. The mechanism of MTA action in the development of preimplantation mouse embryos was probably different from those of hypoxanthine and adenosine, which are well-characterized purine nucleosides that act as inhibitors of the cleavage of mouse 2-cell embryos. From the shared molecular and biological properties of Fr.B-25 and MTA, we concluded that Fr.B-25 is MTA. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first delineation of the effect of MTA on the development of preimplantation mammalian embryos cultured in vitro.

Glycine is the most concentrated amino acid in the female genital tract. In this study, we report its conversion and incorporation into proteins in the presence or absence of methionine, in borth 1-cell and blastocyst mouse embryos. The uptake, incorporation and conversion of radiolabelled glycine were studied in the presence or absence of unlabelled methionine. For control purposes, the reciprocal experiment was performed with labelled methionine in the presence or absence of unlabelled glycine. At the 1-cell stage neither glycine uptake nor its incorporation into proteins is inhibited by methionine. Glycine is, however, highly used as an oxidisable energy substrate, via glycolate. At the blastocyst stage, glycine conversion into other amino acids is high and mainly utilised in the formation of glutamic acid. Glycine is highly incorporated into proteins, resulting in a poor exchange of glycine from the preloaded embryos. Methionine competes for glycine uptake and consequently reduces its overall incorporation into proteins. For methionine, neither its uptake nor its incorporation into proteins is reduced in the presence of glycine for the two embryonic stages tested here. The embryo has different mechanisms for incorporation and utilisation of methionine and glycine. Glycine, which has an important function in the embryo, has an inefficient transport system compared with methionine. We were unable to demonstrate the presence of methyiglycine since SAM-glycine-methyltransferase (EC 2.1.1.20) was not detected. The same results were obtained when exogenous methionine was added. We therefore concluded that glycine does not compete in transmethylation within the embryo.

The objective of the present study was to examine the effect of rapid freezing on the in vitro and in vivo survival of zona-pellucida-free hatched mouse blastocysts. Hatched blastocysts were rapidly frozen in a freezing medium containing either ethylene glycol (EG) or glycerol (G) in 1.5 M or 3 M concentration. Prior to freezing, embryos were equilibrated in the freezing medium for 2 min, 10 min, 20 min or 30 min at room temperature. To freeze them, embryos were held in liquid nitrogen vapour [≈1 cm above the surface of the liquid nitrogen (LN2)] for 2 minutes and then immersed into LN2. After thawing, embryos were transferred either to rehydration medium (DPBS + 10% foetal calf serum + 0.5 M sucrose) for 10 minutes or rehydrated directly in DPBS supplemented with foetal calf serum. In vitro survival of embryos frozen with EG was higher than those frozen with G. The highest survival was obtained with 3 M EG and 2 min or 10 min equilibration prior to freezing, combined with direct rehydration after thawing. Frozen blastocysts developed into normal foetuses as well as unfrozen control ones did, with averages of 30% (control), 26% (EG) and 15% (G). The results show that hatching and hatched mouse blastocysts can be cryopreserved by a simple rapid freezing protocol in EG without significant loss of viability. Our data indicate that the mechanical protection of the zona pellucida is not needed during freezing in these stages.

We had previously developed a methodology to introduce foreign DNA into mouse eggs and embryos using cationic lipids as vectors. In this report we use this technique to produce transgenic animals. Mouse embryos at the pronuclear stage were transfected using a mixture of a plasmid DNA, encoding for a nuclear form of β-galactosidase, and a commercial lipid transfection reagent. Embryos were washed and incubated overnight. Those that cleaved and develop to the 2-cell stage of normal appearance were transferred to the Fallopian tubes of pseudopregnant foster mothers. We analysed a total of 158 offspring and found two, a female and a male, to be transgenic (1.27% of the total). Integration of the foreign DNA in the female was showed by Southern blot. Both animals expressed the lacz in several organs, but none of them either displayed expression in the germ cells or transmitted the transgene to their offspring. Taken together our results show that lipid transfection can generate transgenic mice, but the efficiency needs to be improved for this method to be widely applied.

Phosphate induces 2-cell block in AKR/N mouse embryos in vitro. In an attempt to define the mechanism responsible for the inhibitory effect of phosphate, the critical period for this effect was determined. Then the amounts of the mRNAs for cyclin B and cdc25B, factors related to activation of M-phase promoting factor (MPF), were measured by quantitative reverse transcription–polymerase chain reaction. Exposure to phosphate during the late 1-cell (10–20 h after insemination) and early 2-cell stages (0–12 h after first cleavage) was found to induce 2-cell block in AKR/N mouse embryos. This period corresponds to the initiation of zygotic gene activation (ZGA). The presence of phosphate during second cleavage had no effect on 2-cell block of the embryos. The relative levels of cyclin B and cdc25B mRNAs did not change significantly during the 1-cell stage and decreased during the early 2-cell stage to almost half of the initial levels. When the amounts of mRNA in embryos cultured with and without phosphate were compared they were found to be almost identical even in the 2-cell block embryos, and a significant decrease in mRNA was observed only 33 h after insemination in embryos about to undergo phosphate block at the 2-cell stage. These results show that phosphate does not directly inhibit MPF activity and confirm the presence of cyclin B and cdc25B even in 2-cell block embryos. Furthermore, the fact that the decrease in mRNA levels corresponded to the critical period for the inhibitory effect of phosphate suggests that suppression of initial ZGA induction is involved in the 2-cell block of mouse embryos in vitro.