Development of explanted rat embryos in circulating medium
The inaccessibility of rat embryos in vivo has prompted several previous attempts to grow them in culture. It has been shown that embryos explanted at head fold or early somite stages with their membranes will develop on the surface of plasma-embryo extract clots (New & Stein, 1964; New, 1966 a) or in homologous liquid plasma or serum (Nicholas & Rudnick, 1934, 1938; Jolly & Lieure, 1938; New, 1966a, b). The explants can conveniently be cultured in watch glasses, as in the standard tissue culture method of Fell & Robison (1929), and development is improved if they are incubated in 60–90% O2 and 3–5% CO2. Under these conditions the older embryos grow well for 30–40 h developing to 25- to 30-somite stages. However, no embryos have been observed to develop much further than this, and those explanted at stages more advanced than 30 somites have always died fairly quickly.