Regulation of Hamster Embryo Development In Vitro by Amino Acids

Abstract

Considerable attention has been directed towards determining carbohydrate energy substrates for supporting in vitro development of pre-implantation embryos, mostly in studies with mice (1,2). In contrast, there has been little interest in examining amino acid requirements, doubtless because no regulatory role for amino acids was found in studies with mouse embryos. Although glycine as the sole fixed-nitrogen source was able to support 8-cell mouse embryo development (3), later studies showed that a fixed-nitrogen source was not essential for development of 2-cell mouse embryos (4).