Protective effect of antioxidants on the pre-maturation aging of mouse oocytes

Abstract

Pre-maturation aging of immature oocytes may adversely affect the fate of an oocyte. Oxidative stress is one of the most detrimental factors affecting oocyte developmental competence and maturation during aging. In this study, experiments were designed to examine whether supplementation of antioxidants in a culture medium could protect immature mouse oocytes from damages caused by oxidative stress. Mouse oocytes at germinal vesicle stage were prevented from meiosis resumption and cultured in a medium with or without antioxidants for 12–36 h to allow oocytes to undergo aging. After aging, oocytes were cultured for maturation. Nuclear maturation, mitochondria activity, spindle morphology and DNA integrity were examined after maturation. It was found that antioxidants had protective effects on the oocytes in terms of nuclear maturation, functional mitochondria, spindle morphology and DNA integrity. As aging time was prolonged from 12 to 36 h, the protective effect of antioxidants became more obvious. However, as compared with oocytes without aging, it was found that aging significantly inhibited nuclear maturation, impaired mitochondria function, and damaged the spindle and DNA. These results indicate that pre-maturation aging is detrimental to oocytes’ competence to undergo maturation and other cellular activities, and antioxidants can protect oocytes from damages caused by aging.

Isobutylparaben Negatively Affects Porcine Oocyte Maturation Through Increasing Oxidative Stress and Cytoskeletal Abnormalities

“…This study also provides a warning for women who are frequently exposed to IBP at high concentrations by using in vitro culture model of porcine cumulus oocyte complexes as can be seen in Figure . The reason we chose porcine oocytes as a model because oocyte size and maturation time are more like human than mouse (Santos et al ), and several articles have used porcine cumulus oocyte complexes to evaluate oocyte (Liu et al ; Han et al ; Wang et al ; Miao et al ; Liang et al ).…”

Pioglitazone improves porcine oocyte maturation and subsequent parthenogenetic embryo development in vitro by increasing lipid metabolism

“…Mature oocytes arrested at MII can undergo fertilization, somatic cell nuclear transfer, intracellular sperm injection, parthenogenesis, or other types of activation. Meiotic spindle assembly is essential to prevent chromosome misalignment and production of aneuploid gametes (Bennabi et al, ; Rajani et al, ) and to separate maternal chromosomes, which is associated with nuclear maturation (Liang et al, ; Liu et al, ). Fibroblast growth factor 10 increases the percentage of oocytes that display PB emission by regulating chromosome alignment and spindle assembly, thereby improving nuclear maturation (Son et al, ).…”

“…Oocyte maturation is a highly complex process that is dependent on the precise control of cellular metabolism during meiotic cell divisions. Therefore, improvement of IVM efficiency is important because oocyte maturation is an initial process before embryo Meiotic spindle assembly is essential to prevent chromosome misalignment and production of aneuploid gametes (Bennabi et al, 2018;Rajani et al, 2012) and to separate maternal chromosomes, which is associated with nuclear maturation (Liang et al, 2017;Liu et al, 2015). Fibroblast growth factor 10 increases the percentage of oocytes that display PB emission by regulating chromosome alignment and spindle assembly, thereby improving nuclear maturation (Son et al, 2017).…”

Maternal transmission of mitochondrial diseases

“…The idea is to expose the oocyte for a period of~24 h to drugs such as L-carnitine, rosiglitazone, salubrinal, or BGP-15, which potentially enhance mitochondria activity, decrease lipid content, and mitigate ER stress. In fact, treatments involving one or more of these drugs have been shown to mitigate the defects in the oocyte and the next generation (Wu et al, 2010(Wu et al, , 2015Dunning and Robker, 2012;Liang et al, 2017). However, a major challenge in making these treatments available is to overcome the side effects of in vitro maturation (Lonergan and Fair, 2016;Yang and Chian, 2017).…”