1986: Measuring what an embryo eats
The Modern Laboratory · The Modern Papers
The Modern Papers · MP·05 · 1986
1986: Measuring what an embryo eats
In the first issue of a new European journal, Gardner and Leese measured the appetite of a single mouse embryo without harming it.
The story
At the University of York, the student David Gardner and his teacher Henry Leese measured the pyruvate and glucose taken up by single mouse embryos, day by day, from tiny drops of medium around each one. Pyruvate came first. At the eight-cell stage the embryo turned to glucose.
The point was not the mouse. The method could follow an embryo's chemistry without touching it, before anyone decided whether to transfer it. It also showed that an embryo's needs change as it grows, the idea behind the sequential culture media that later carried human embryos to day five (MP·10).
The paper appeared in January 1986 in the first issue of Human Reproduction, the journal of the new European society, ESHRE.
“These methods will enable the biochemistry of early embryos to be monitored non-invasively.”From the paper's abstract
The paper
Non-Invasive Measurement of Nutrient Uptake by Single Cultured Pre-Implantation Mouse Embryos
David K. Gardner, Henry J. Leese
Human Reproduction 1986;1(1):25 to 27. January 1986. Read the paper.
Find it in the museum
How we know
Citation and abstract read in PubMed (PMID 3455417) on 14 October 2026.
The IVF Museum · The Modern Papers
Compiled with AI-assisted research and checked against the original sources. Undergoing peer review. Corrections are warmly welcomed.
