Effects of Mito-TEMPO on the survival of vitrified bovine blastocysts in vitro

Abstract

Cryopreservation as a technique for reproduction is used to preserve the genetic complements on domestic animals and humans (Lee et al., 2014;Kim et al., 2020).Especially, cryopreservation technology provides ad-ditional opportunity of pregnancy through the vitrifiedwarmed process in animal embryos. This is applied as a necessary technique for pregnancy using in vitro fertilization (IVF) embryos to solve the difficulty of female infertility (Hara et al., 2018). However, cryopreservation method is accompanied by cryoinjury such as the reactive

The antioxidant capacity of Mito-TEMPO improves the preimplantation development and viability of vitrified-warmed blastocysts through the stabilization of F-actin morphological aspects in bovine embryos

“…These results are in concordance with those reported by Mehaisen et al (2015), where melatonin supplements promoted improved development of both the fresh and vitrified rabbit embryos through antioxidant capacity. Moreover, our previous study similarly indicated that supplementation of Mito-TEMPO during cryopreservation could protect the apoptosis-related ROS and mitochondrial superoxide, which occurred through mitochondrial activation and improved the developmental competence of the freezethawed blastocysts (Jeong et al, 2021). The embryos that survived following their freezing exhibited defects such as a disruption in the cytoskeleton structure and stabilization, high levels of ROS production, and oxidative stress following vitrification (García-Martínez et al, 2020).…”

“…Previous studies mainly discussed the antioxidative effects on the morphological variations regarding the in vitro embryo development and vitrification embryos, such as cleavage rate, blastocyst rate, expanded blastocyst rate, the total blastocyst cell numbers, and the survival rate following the freeze-thawing process (Jeong et al, 2021).…”

“…Following 2 days of initial culturing, the cleaved embryos were further cultured for 5 days in a medium consisting of 50 μL CR1aa (with 10% FBS) at 38.5℃ under 5% CO 2 . During the culture periods, presumptive embryos were treated with 0.1 μM Mito-TEMPO (Jeong et al, 2021) through its addition to the culture medium. The rates of blastocyststage embryos were determined on day 7.…”

“…Previously, we reported that the supplementation of Mito-TEMPO in a vitrification medium has improved the survival rate and quality of vitrified-warmed bovine blastocysts (Jeong et al, 2021). Therefore, the cryopreservation-induced mitochondrial superoxide or ROS production may cause cryopreservation-associated deterioration of the embryonic cytoskeleton leading to low survival potential.…”