Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 June 2017
The exposure of oocytes to heat stress during the maturation process results in harmful effects to their internal organelles, low fertilization capability and higher embryonic losses. In the present experiment the effect of heat shock (HS) during the maturation process was assessed. In Assay 1, oocytes from winter (December–March; n = 100) and summer (June–September; n = 100) months were collected and matured to analyse their HS tolerance. Total RNA was extracted from matured oocytes and cDNA synthesis was performed, followed by qPCR for selected genes (Cx43, CDH1, DNMT1, HSPA14), compared with two reference genes (GAPDH and SDHA). In Assay 2, oocytes collected during the winter were subjected to kinetic HS by stressing them at 39.5°C for 6, 12, 18 or 24 h and were afterwards matured at control temperature (38.5°C), and subsequently subjected to the previously described gene analysis procedure. Results of Assay 1 show that summer-collected oocytes exhibited lower maturation rate than winter-collected oocytes, which may be due to the down-regulation of the HSPA 14 gene. Assay 2 showed that 6 h of HS had no effect on gene regulation. CDH1 and DNMT1 up-regulation was observed starting at 12 h, which may represent the effect of heat shock on oocyte development.
To send this article to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you used this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your Dropbox account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you used this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your Google Drive account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.