Studying thermal effects of infrared femtosecond laser pulses applied for laser assisted hatching procedure on mouse embryos

Infrared femtosecond laser pulses are used for microsurgery of zona pellucida of mouse embryos at late stages of preimplantation development. Safety of the procedure is studied through embryo viability and heat shock proteins (HSP) gene expression assessment methods. Expression levels of HSP90 were shown to increase slightly compared to the negative control group suggesting delicacy of the femtosecond microsurgery.