Light induced injury in mouse embryos revealed by single-cell RNA sequencing

We adopt mouse pre-implantation embryos to evaluate the effects of different exposure time and illumination intensity. The damage-causing time and intensity is chosen to treat embryos at 2-cell stage. Single-cell transcriptomes from 2-cell to blastocyst stage are analyzed under both control and high-intensity light conditions. These data show that embryo cells at each embryonic stage can be categorized into different light conditions. Further analyses of differentially expressed genes and relative GO terms reveal the light-induced injury as well as the potential repair response after high-intensity illumination treatment. Maternal-to-zygote transition is also affected through the failure of removing maternal RNAs and deactivating zygotic genomes. In conclusion, our work revealed integrated response of high-intensity light, involving the long-lasting injury effects, damage repair mechanism and blastocyst morphology changes. Overall design: Two groups are included in this study: one is the high-intensity light exposure group that contained 34 samples, and the other is the control group that contains 33 samples.