serum (Pel-Freez, Rogers, AR), 2 U/mL heparin, 100 U/mL penicillin-G, 0.1 mg/mL

streptomycin, and 1 mM glutamine. Oocyte maturation medium was TCM-199 (Invitrogen,

Carlsbad, CA) with Earle's salts supplemented with 10% (v/v) bovine steer serum, 2 [tg/mL

estradiol 17-0, 20 tg/mL bovine FSH (Folltropin-V; Bioniche, Belleview, Ontario, Canada), 22

tg/mL sodium pyruvate, 50 tg/mL gentamicin sulfate, and 1 mM glutamine. Percoll was from

Amersham Pharmacia Biotech (Uppsala, Sweden). Potassium simplex optimized medium that

contained 1 mg/ml BSA was from Caisson. On the day of use, KSOM was modified to produce

KSOM-BE2 as described previously [26]. Recombinant human IGF-1 was obtained from

Upstate Biotech (Lake Placid, NY) and recombinant human IFN-a (3.84 x 108 IU/mg) was from

EMD Biosciences (San Diego, CA). Prostaglandin F2a was Lutalyse from Pharmacia &

UpJohn (New York, NY) and GnRH was Cystorelin from Merial (Duluth, GA). Controlled

internal drug releasing devices were purchased from Pfizer (New York, NY) and lidocaine was

from Pro Labs (St. Joseph, MO)

In Vitro Embryo Production

 Embryos were produced in vitro as described previously (Soto et al., 2003). Briefly,

COCs were obtained by slicing 2- to 10-mm follicles on the surface of ovaries (predominantly

beef cattle) obtained from Central Beef Packing Co. (Center Hill, FL). Those COCs with

multiple layers of compact cumulus cells were washed two times in OCM and used for

subsequent steps. Groups of 10 COCs were placed in 50-tl drops of OMM overlaid with mineral

oil and matured for 21-24 h at 38.50C in an atmosphere of 5% (v/v) CO2 in humidified air.

Matured COCs were then washed once in HEPES-TALP and transferred in groups of 30 to 4-

well plates containing 600 pl of IVF-TALP and 25 pl of PHE (0.5 mM penicillamine, 0.25 mM

hypotaurine, and 25 iM epinephrine in 0.9% [w/v] NaC1) per well and fertilized with -1 x 106

Percoll-purified spermatozoa from a pool of frozen-thawed semen from three bulls. Depending