Screening high‐quality fetal bovine serum for porcine oocyte maturation in vitro

• Published in: Animal models and experimental medicine Vol. 2; no. 4; pp. 334 - 339
• Main Authors: Liu, Xueqing, Lang, Qiaoli, Wu, Meng, You, Xiaoyan, He, Qiling, Luo, Ling, Liu, Zijia, Xiao, Puying, Huang, Nan, Yang, Xi, Ge, Liangpeng
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States John Wiley & Sons, Inc 01.12.2019; John Wiley and Sons Inc; Wiley
• Subjects: Cell culture; Cell growth; Cell survival; Culture media; Embryogenesis; fetal bovine serum; Fetal calf serum; Fibroblasts; Follicular fluid; Laboratories; Maturation; maturation rate; Oocytes; Penicillin; Physiology; Polyvinyl alcohol; porcine oocytes; Statistical analysis; Technical Note; fetal bovine serum; porcine oocytes; maturation rate
• ISSN: 2576-2095; 2096-5451; 2576-2095
• DOI: 10.1002/ame2.12095

Fetal bovine serum (FBS) is widely used in cell cultures due to its high stability and easy access. It was also used as a substitute for porcine follicular fluid (PFF) in previous studies. However, FBS components are unclear, and the presence of FBS in culture media may introduce a variation from batch to batch. This study aimed to establish an effective method to screen FBS in place of PFF in the culture media for porcine oocytes in vitro. We screened FBS from different sources by using porcine fetal fibroblast cells. The effects of six FBS samples on porcine fetal fibroblast cell growth were tested via frozen cell survival assay, cell clone formation assay, cell growth curve, and cell passage activity assay. The best serum that we called GFBS (heat‐inactivated FBS, cat. no. 10500‐64; Gibco) showed a similar effect on the maturation and development of porcine oocytes to that of PFF and can be used as a good substitute for PFF. These results suggested that the porcine fetal fibroblast cell culture test can be used as a valuable method to screen FBS for porcine oocyte maturation and embryonic development in vitro.