In many cases, in vitro embryo production, the rate of embryos reaching the blastocyst stage is recorded under high-resolution microscopy using morphological criteria. However, if we perform nucleus staining (e.g., with Hoechst) and count them, this number is lower than what is established in the literature as the definition. What is the minimum number of cells in an embryo exhibiting blastocyst morphology to be considered as such? Especially in pig embryos.
Blastomeres number depends on blastocyst stage. Compact morula (64 cells) comes before blastocel formation, so ideally bovine early blasocyst has 128 cells. We may lose counting some cells from 2D images. Many published articles count blastomeres on day 8 or 9 post-IVF, which may present relatively high cells number.
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