Anatomy and Embryology

, Volume 183, Issue 6, pp 559–571 | Cite as

Effects of visible light and room temperature on the ultrastructure of preimplantation rabbit embryos: a time course study

  • Christa Hegele-Hartung
  • Armin Schumacher
  • Bernd Fischer
Original Articles
Accepted:

Summary

In a time course study (4–20 h) rabbit early cleavage stages (day 1 p.c.) and compacted morulae (day 3 p.c.) were exposed to visible light or room temperature (23° C), respectively. An 8 h light exposure of day 1 embryos caused alterations in nuclear morphology (lobulated nuclei, loss of nucleolar diffentiation), an increased electron density of the cytoplasm, and cellular fragmentation leading to a considerable degeneration of blastomeres (central clustering of organelles, loss of cell surface differentiation) after a 20 h exposure. Room temperature exposure (compacted Day 3 morulae) led to decompaction and a cleavage delay after 8 h. After 10 h, arrested metaphases occurred in all examined morulae. Even after 20 h at 23° C, day 3 embryos were at the decompacted morula stage, and showed metaphase-arrested blastomeres. The general morphology of the blastomeres was unaffected at this temperature, except for vacuolated serand cis-side vesicles of the Golgi complex at 8, 12 and 20 h, respectively.

Key words

Visible light Room temperature Pre-implantation embryos Rabbit TEM 
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Copyright information

© Springer-Verlag 1991

Authors and Affiliations

  • Christa Hegele-Hartung
    • 1
  • Armin Schumacher
    • 1
  • Bernd Fischer
    • 1
  1. 1.Department of Anatomy and Reproductive BiologyMedical Faculty of the RWTH AachenAachenFederal Republic of Germany

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