원문정보
초록
영어
Autophagy is known to be involved in a variety of biological processes. However, relatively a little is known regarding oocyte maturation and preimplantation development in mammals. Thus, the current study was conducted to investigate the role of autophagy in oocyte maturation and subsequent preimplantation development in pigs. Porcine oocytes were matured in the presence or absence of 1 μM rapamycin, an autophagy inducing agent, fertilized in vitro, and cultured to blastocyst stage. From Western blotting analysis, we found that active form LC3 was detected during in vitro maturation (IVM) period, suggesting the possible role of autophagy in oocyte maturation. Interestingly, treatment of rapamycin during IVM significantly increased nuclear maturation compared to control group. Importantly, rapamycin-assisted IVM greatly improved monospermic fertilization and blastocyst development rates compared to control embryos. In addition, we also found that cell number and blastomere survival in blastocysts were markedly increased in rapamycin treatment group, which was further evidenced by both elevation of anti-apoptotic transcript Bcl-XL and decrease of pro-apoptotic transcript Bax. Collectively, these results strongly suggest that induction of autophagy may contribute to the completion of nuclear and cytoplasmic maturation of porcine oocytes.