Amazing stuff! However, you could not repeat this with a pregnant woman!
If only the embryo knew what was going on! 😊
"... most of the oviduct’s [fallopian tube] functions haven’t been observed in their natural environment. ...
Wang and colleagues have used “optical coherence tomography” (OCT) to peer inside the abdomens of female mice. ...
The team performed surgery on 12 female mice, implanting a small window made of glass and resin to allow them to bypass the skin and muscle and directly visualise the fallopian tubes. ...
Doing this over time allowed the researchers to capture both the oviduct dynamics and the embryo movement within the fallopian tube. ..."
From the abstract:
"The mammalian oviduct (also called the fallopian tube) is an essential organ for natural pregnancy. As one of its major functions, the oviduct transports preimplantation embryos to the uterus for implantation. This is a critical process, and abnormalities are responsible for a range of reproductive disorders, such as tubal ectopic pregnancy and infertility, whose etiologies are unclear.
For transporting embryos, the oviduct is fundamentally a tubular mechanical pump with motile cilia lining the luminal epithelium and smooth muscle surrounding the mucosa wall. Although bidirectional movement of embryos has been observed during the transport process, how the oviduct produces this type of embryo movement remains unknown.
Understanding this pumping mechanism is vital to identifying the functional causes of oviduct-related reproductive disorders, but answering this question requires dynamic imaging of the transport process in its native environment, which is difficult to achieve in mammalian models.
Here, we use optical coherence tomography and apply in vivo dynamic 3D imaging of the mouse oviduct to uncover the oviduct pumping mechanism in transporting preimplantation embryos toward pregnancy.
By inhibiting the oviduct smooth muscle contraction, we first show that the oviduct muscular activity drives the bidirectional embryo movement. We then present a quantitative assessment of the oviduct contraction wave. This analysis, together with the embryo movement information, indicates that the forward movement of embryos is produced by peristalsis, while the backward embryo movement is generated by a suction process driven by the oviduct relaxation at earlier contraction sites, showing a leaky peristaltic pump.
Finally, we reveal how the net displacement of embryos is created under this pumping mechanism, which effectively transports embryos toward the uterus.
This work elucidates, for the first time, the oviduct pumping mechanism in transporting preimplantation embryos, paving the way for understanding the biomechanics of the mammalian oviduct."
Researchers use OCT imaging to uncover how the fallopian tube transports embryos "Mouse study lays groundwork for understanding reproductive challenges like infertility and ectopic pregnancy"
(A) In vivo imaging setup with a clamp stabilising the window implanted on the right dorsal side of the mouse.
(B) In vivo bright-field image of the oviduct as well as the ovary and a portion of the uterus through the window.
(C) In vivo 3D OCT image of the oviduct showing its 3D morphology and structure through the window. Scale bars are 500 µm.
Fig. 2. In vivo 3D OCT imaging of the preimplantation embryo movement and the oviduct contraction and relaxation. The embryo movement is bidirectional in all regions of the oviduct isthmus and coincides with the oviduct muscular activity shown as contraction and relaxation (Visualization 1). Triangles of the same color point at the same embryo at different time points. Scale bar is 300 µm.
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