RNA-Seq transcriptome profiling of mouse oocytes after in vitro maturation and/or vitrification

Abstract

In vitro maturation (IVM) and vitrification have been widely used to prepare oocytes before fertilization; however, potential effects of these procedures, such as expression profile changes, are poorly understood. In this study, mouse oocytes were divided into four groups and subjected to combinations of in vitro maturation and/or vitrification treatments. RNA-seq and in silico pathway analysis were used to identify differentially expressed genes (DEGs) that may be involved in oocyte viability after in vitro maturation and/or vitrification. Our results showed that 1) 69 genes were differentially expressed after IVM, 66 of which were up-regulated. Atp5e and Atp5o were enriched in the most significant gene ontology term “mitochondrial membrane part”; thus, these genes may be promising candidate biomarkers for oocyte viability after IVM. 2) The influence of vitrification on the transcriptome of oocytes was negligible, as no DEGs were found between vitrified and fresh oocytes. 3) The MII stage is more suitable for oocyte vitrification with respect to the transcriptome. This study provides a valuable new theoretical basis to further improve the efficiency of in vitro maturation and/or oocyte vitrification.

Single-Cell Transcriptome Profiling Revealed That Vitrification of Somatic Cloned Porcine Blastocysts Causes Substantial Perturbations in Gene Expression

“…Recently, Smart-seq2 technology has been developed to analyze transcripts at a single cell level (Picelli et al, 2014 ). This technique has been successfully applied to detect the effect of vitrification on the transcriptome in mouse oocytes (Gao et al, 2017 ; Lee et al, 2019 ) and bovine oocytes (Wang et al, 2017 ; Huang et al, 2018 ). In particular, by using the Smart-seq2 technique, it was found that vitrification mainly affected apoptosis in mouse oocytes (Lee et al, 2019 ).…”

Microinjection induces changes in the transcriptome of bovine oocytes

“…We have examined the transcriptome in individual injected oocytes and compared it to that from non-injected oocytes 17 . Transcriptome analysis of single oocytes has been reported in various species including mouse, cow and man [29][30][31] . We detected approximately 10,600 genes as being expressed in bovine oocytes, which is similar to what has been reported previously 30,32,33 .…”

What impact does oocyte vitrification have on epigenetics and gene expression?

“…In animals, from diverse models, four studies have used global transcriptomic analyses (i.e. RNA-sequencing) [125][126][127][128] (Table 4). In a murine model, Gao et al found no differences between vitrified and fresh oocytes [125].…”

“…RNA-sequencing) [125][126][127][128] (Table 4). In a murine model, Gao et al found no differences between vitrified and fresh oocytes [125]. On the contrary, differentially expressed genes were found in bovine and porcine oocytes [126][127][128].…”