Perspectives on Embryo Biotechnology: Its Origins, Current Uses and Future Prospects

This lecture will begin by tracing some of the history behind techniques that we nowadays take for granted in the practice of embryo transfer, and in the application of the technique to various animal biotechnologies. It will be argued that an appreciation of such history can teach us a great deal about how we need to study and teach the subject, and about the best ways to conduct and finance the research that is essential to further progress. Examples in support of this argument will be taken from the changes that have occurred in the way embryos, particularly bovine embryos, have been collected, maintained in vitro, subjected to a variety of manipulations (sexing, division to produce identical animals, combination into chimeras, transfection with foreign genes), frozen and thawed, and transferred over the past 50 years. (omitted)