Bovine Embryonic Developmental Competence Is Predicted By Expression Levels Of Genes Related To Oxidative Stress Response

The aberrant gene expression of early bovine embryos are a major cause for developemtal arrest. Therefore our aim was to detect transcriptomic fingerprints which correlate with the subsequent developmental competence of a two cell stage embryo. 2-cell stage embryos were bisected; one blastomere was cultured individually, its sister-blastomere was snap-frozen. According to the development of individual cultured blastomeres, the corresponding frozen samples were pooled into three groups for global gene expression analyses. We defined three groups: I. embryos which did not cleave after separation (2CB), II. embryos which stopped cleaving at four cell stage (8CB) and III. embryos reaching blastocyst stage (BL).