1997: Watching fertilisation happen
The Modern Laboratory · The Modern Papers
The Modern Papers · MP·09 · 1997
1997: Watching fertilisation happen
In Adelaide, a camera watched fifty eggs through the night, and fertilisation turned out to be a sequence of living events.
The story
Dianna Payne, Sean Flaherty, Michael Barry and Colin Matthews filmed 50 eggs for 17 to 20 hours after ICSI, in a small chamber kept at culture conditions. The eggs fertilised as well as their sister eggs in an ordinary incubator.
The films showed circular waves of granules passing through the egg every 20 to 53 minutes, the second polar body leaving, and the two pronuclei forming and drawing together until they touched. Eggs with steadier timing tended to give better embryos.
It was the beginning of time-lapse embryology. Today many laboratories film their embryos from fertilisation to day five, as in the museum's own film of an embryo's first days in Film and Photo.
“human fertilization comprises numerous complex dynamic events.”From the paper's abstract
The paper
Preliminary Observations on Polar Body Extrusion and Pronuclear Formation in Human Oocytes Using Time-Lapse Video Cinematography
Dianna Payne, Sean P. Flaherty, Michael F. Barry, Colin D. Matthews
Human Reproduction 1997;12(3):532 to 541. March 1997. Read the paper.
Find it in the museum
Room 8, Watching it grow, Dianna Payne, Sean Flaherty, Michael Barry, Colin Matthews
How we know
Citation and abstract read in PubMed (PMID 9130755) 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.
