Nutrient uptake and culture of Sminthopsis macroura (stripe-faced dunnart) embryos

Abstract

Glucose and pyruvate uptake by individual embryos were measured in a marsupial species (stripe-faced dunnart) and a eutherian species (mouse). At each stage of development, nutrient uptake by the dunnart embryo was around an order of magnitude greater than that of the mouse embryo. The pattern of glucose uptake by the dunnart embryo was not like that for any eutherian embryo, all of which have a low glucose uptake before the blastocyst stage. Rather, in the dunnart embryo there was a significant increase in glucose uptake after the third cleavage division, increasing from 13.6 pmol embryo h-1 at the 4-cell stage to 34.9 pmol embryo h-1 by the 8-cell stage. This increase in glucose uptake bef..