Suggest and explain any three Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ART) to an infertile couple.

Explanation

Infertile couples could be assisted to have children through some special methods called assisted reproductive technologies (ART)
(i) In vitro fertilisation (IVF) is the method in which the mature egg is removed from a woman's ovary, kept in laboratory culture dish and mixed with sperm from husband or donor male. The zygote or early embryos (up to 8 blastomeres) could then be transferred into the fallopian tube of the female (ZIFT-Zygote intra fallopian transfer) and embryos with more than 8 blastomeres, into the uterus (IUT-intra uterine transfer), to complete its further development. A normal baby can be born to such a mother. Such a baby is called test tube baby.
(ii) Gamete intra fallopian transfer (GIFT). An ovum is collected from a donor. It is mixed with 50,000 sperms and immediately transferred into the fallopian tube of another female who cannot produce one, but can provide suitable environment for fertilisation and further development of embryo (in vivo).
(iii) Intra-cytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) is a procedure to form an embryo in the laboratory in which a sperm is directly injected into the ovum. Then the fertilized egg is implanted into woman's uterus.
(iv) Artificial insemination (AI) technique is used in cases when male is unable to inseminate the female or has very low sperm count. In this technique, the semen collected from the husband or a healthy donor is artificially introduced either into the vagina or into the uterus (IUI-intra uterine insemination) of the female.