---

---

---

Have you ever come across that one nasty grain or a pulse that is so hard to chew that it hurts your teeth? That grain must have not sprouted if you observe. Although your mom had kept all conditions same for all the grains, some stubborn grains don’t seem to sprout at all.Similarly, some stubborn embryos in an IVF lab don’t easily hatch even if all conditions required are fed to it.

But why should an embryo hatch? 

Just like how a seed must sprout for it to implant itself onto the soil to grown into a beautiful plant, an embryo must hatch out of its Zona Pellucida to implant itself onto the endometrium for it to gown into a cute baby! 

Here the seed is the embryo and the soil for it is the endometrium

So, what do we do with the embryos that are like the nasty hard grains that won’t sprout?

We break their wall!  

In this case the zona pellucida of the embryo

This process of weakening or breaking the zona pellucida of the embryo artificially to help the embryo hatch out its blastomeres and aid implantation after embryo transfer is called Assisted Hatching of the embryos.

Want to learn more ways to help the seed called embryo grow on the garden soil called the endometrium? Take up one of our courses on advanced embryology and reproductive medicine of various levels available for both clinicians and life science students.

---