Arrested Cells/Cellular Debris Expelled from Blastocysts Is Self-Correction Phenomenon During Early Embryonic Development

Abstract

Arrested cells/cellular debris is component left in the zona pellucida after blastocyst hatching. To identify whether expelling arrested cells/cellular debris from blastocysts is a process of human embryo self-correction by eliminating abnormal cells, 21 pairs of trophectoderm (TE) biopsies and the corresponding arrested cells/cellular debris expelled from the blastocysts from July to December 2020 were collected and analyzed using next-generation sequencing (NGS). Then, the NGS results of TE biopsies and the corresponding arrested cells/cellular debris were compared. We identified that 47.6% of blastocysts (10/21) were aneuploidies and mosaicism. A total of 18 groups of arrested cells/cellular debris (85.7%) expelled from blastocysts were abnormal, including nine aneuploid embryos and nine euploid embryos. In the arrested cells/cellular debris, all the chromosomes were affected. In conclusion, mosaicism and aneuploidies are common features of early embryonic development, and the arrested cells/cellular debris expelled from blastocysts provides evidence of early embryonic self-correction.