Colony stimulating factor 2 causes changes in the transcriptome of the bovine preimplantation embryo

The objective of this study was to identify changes on the CSF2 embryo transcriptome that make them more able to become a blastocyst and more likely to survive after transfer. Embryos were treated with CSF2 at day 5 after fertilization and at day 6 morulae and blastocysts were select for the microarray analysis. A total of 160 genes that had a 1.5-fold difference in expression and a significance of P ≤ 0.05 could be annotated. Analysis of the data identified 13 biological process ontologies that could be grouped into four functional groups (development and differentiation process, cell communication, apoptosis and cell adhesion). Experimental conditions: CSF2 treated vs. CSF2 nontreated bovine in vitro produced preimplantation embryos. Biological replicates: CSF2 treated vs. nontreated bovine preimplantation embryos were used in a dye switch two-color microarray experimental design. Ratio data was not used in these experiments.