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The effects of the paternal breed on early embryo and later pre- and postnatal development are well documented. Several recent studies have suggested that such paternal effects may be mediated by the paternally induced epigenetic modifications during early embryogenesis. The objective of this study was to investigate the effects of the paternal breed on the early embryonic development and relative expression of the maternally imprinted gene, IGF-II, and the apoptosis-related genes BAK1 and BCL2-L1 in in vitro produced (IVP) bovine embryos derived from two unrelated paternal breeds (Holstein and Brown Swiss). The degree of correlation of IGF-II expression pattern with embryo developmental competence and apoptosis-related genes was also investigated. The relative abundance of IGF-II, BCL2-L1 and BAK1 transcripts in day 8 embryos was measured by quantitative reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction using the comparative Cp method. Our data revealed that the paternal breed did not influence cleavage rate, blastocyst rate and relative abundance of IGF-II, BAK1 and BCL2-L1 in day 8 blastocysts (P > 0.05). Nevertheless, IGF-II expression levels were highly correlated with embryonic developmental competence (r = 0.66, P < 0.1), relative expression of BCL2-L1 (r = 0.72, P < 0.05) and ratio of BCL2-L1/BAK1 (r = 0.78, P < 0.05). In conclusion, our data show that IGF-II, BCL2-L1 and BAK1 expression is not related to the chosen combination of paternal breed, but that IGF-II expression is correlated with embryonic viability and apoptosis-related gene expression.

Intrinsic defects within the embryos, reflected by elevated cell death and low proliferative ability, are considered the most critical factors associated with bovine infertility. The identification of embryonic factors, which are responsible for successful embryo development, is thus critical in designing strategies for infertility intervention. In this experiment, the possible mechanisms involved in both blastomere proliferation and regulation of cell death were studied by analysis of relative expression patterns of IGF-II, BCL2-L1, BAK1, and HSP70 in 3 classes of morphological quality groups (e.g., excellent, good, and poor) of bovine blastocysts produced by IVF. Variation in total blastocyst cell numbers as well as their allocation to inner cell mass and trophectoderm lineages were also determined by differential CDX2 staining. Results showed that transcript levels for IGF-II, BCL2-L1, and the BCL2-L1/BAK1 ratio were higher in excellent- and good-quality blastocysts compared with low-quality blastocysts (P<0.01), whereas mRNA levels for HSP70 were higher in low-quality blastocyst compared with excellent-quality bovine blastocysts (P<0.05). In addition, excellent-quality blastocysts displayed not only greater total cell number but also greater mean inner cell mass/total cell number proportion than that of poor-quality blastocysts (P<0.01). The expression levels of IGF-II showed negative correlation with the levels of HSP70 (r=-0.70; P<0.05); however, the correlation of expression levels of IGF-II with both of BCL2-L1 (r=0.91; P<0.01) and the ratio of BCL2-L1/BAK1 (r=0.78; P<0.05) were highly positive. There was no correlation between the expression levels of IGF-II and BAK1 genes. In conclusion, these observations suggested that levels of endogenous IGF-II transcripts might be associated with the quality of IVF embryos by regulating either apoptosis-related genes or mitogenic actions in bovine preimplantation embryos., (Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)