In Vitro Culture of Rat Preimplantation Embryos

The rat is one the most widely used laboratory animal species in many aspects of biomedical research, including the production of genetically engineered animal models to study human diseases and conditions. In addition to in vitro fertilization (IVF), the ability to grow IVF-derived or in vivo-collected zygotes to a desired preimplantation stage (zygote to blastocyst) entirely in vitro has a great importance for studies of developmental biology and genetic modification of laboratory rats for biomedical research. Although embryo biotechnologies are required to study or manipulate the genome effectively, such technologies for rat preimplantation embryos are not currently as successful as they are in the mouse. Here we provide a brief history of the development of rat in vitro culture systems and a step-by-step protocol to produce rat blastocyst stage embryos from zygotes under in vitro conditions from commonly used laboratory rat strains in biomedical research.