Assessing the influence of distinct IVF culture media on human pre-implantation development using single-embryo transcriptomics

The use of Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ART) is rising consistently across the world. However, making an informed consent on the choice of which embryo culture media should be preferred to ensure satisfactory success rates and the future children to be healthy lacks scientific knowledge. Particularly, embryos within their first days are highly sensitive to their micro-environment with limited stress tolerance mechanisms. Here, we aimed to determine whether culture media that differed markedly in their composition used before compaction would affect gene expression and subsequent human embryonic development. We employed single-embryo RNA-seq on human embryos cultured until day-2 or day-5 in distinct culture media.