Acta Veterinaria et Zootechnica Sinica ›› 2023, Vol. 54 ›› Issue (12): 4889-4897.doi: 10.11843/j.issn.0366-6964.2023.12.001

• REVIEW • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Application of Microfluidic Technologies in Livestock in vitro Embryo Production

CHEN Siying, SUN Yawen, LI Kang, LIU Shuo, HAO Haisheng, DU Weihua, ZOU Huiying, ZHU Huabin, PANG Yunwei*   

  1. Institute of Animal Sciences, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing 100193, China
  • Received:2023-07-27 Online:2023-12-23 Published:2023-12-26

Abstract: The technique of in vitro embryo production is one of the crucial technologies to improve the reproductive efficiency of elite livestock breeds. However, its industrialized application has been severely restricted due to the environmental variation of in vivo and in vitro, which leads to poor quality of matured-oocyte and decreased developmental potential of in vitro-generated embryo. Microfluidics can be considered as the science and technology of systems that precisely manipulate structure-fluid at a sub-micrometer level in a microchannel of tens to hundreds of micrometers. They have been extensively applied to the field like chemistry, medicine, and life science due to numerous characteristics, such as low sample consume, fast analysis speed, high-throughput, and high integration. Microfluidics systems possess huge application potentials in several key technical aspects involved in in vitro embryo production procedure. Hence, this review intends to summarize the current knowledge about the applications of microfluidics in oocyte selection and cultivation, sperm sorting, in vitro fertilization, in vitro embryo culture, and gamete and embryo cryopreservation, providing novel conceptions for enhancing the efficiency of in vitro embryo production of domestic animals.

Key words: microfluidics, oocyte, sperm, embryo, cryopreservation

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