Expression of eukaryotic elongation initiation factor 1A differentially marks zygotic genome activation in biparental and parthenogenetic porcine embryos and correlates with in vitro developmental potential
Luca Magnani A , Christine M. Johnson A and Ryan A. Cabot A BA Department of Animal Sciences, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907, USA.
B Corresponding author. Email: rcabot@purdue.edu
Reproduction, Fertility and Development 20(7) 818-825 https://doi.org/10.1071/RD08072
Submitted: 8 April 2008 Accepted: 1 July 2008 Published: 1 September 2008
Abstract
Zygotic genome activation (ZGA) is a major event during cleavage development. In vitro manipulation of mammalian embryos (including embryo culture) can result in developmental arrest around the time of ZGA. Eukaryotic elongation initiation factor 1A (eIF1A) has been used as a marker for ZGA in some mammalian species. We hypothesised expression of eIF1A can be used to assess ZGA in the pig; we also hypothesised that the expression profile of eIF1A can be used to assess developmental potential in vitro. The aims of the present study were to determine the expression pattern of eIF1A during porcine cleavage development and to assess its expression levels in embryos of different quality. We used a real-time reverse transcription–polymerase chain reaction assay to quantify eIF1A transcripts at different time points during cleavage development in porcine embryos produced by parthenogenetic activation (PA) and in vitro fertilisation (IVF). We found that eIF1A is activated at the two-cell stage in IVF embryos and at the four-cell stage in PA embryos. We showed that the increase in transcript levels observed in parthenogenetic embryos is dependent on de novo transcription. We found altered levels of eIF1A transcripts in parthenogenetic embryos that presented as either two- or eight-cell embryos 48 h after activation compared with four-cell embryos at the same time point. Our work supports the hypothesis that eIF1A is a marker of porcine ZGA and its expression profile can be used to assess embryo quality.
Acknowledgements
The authors thank the Indiana Packers Corporation for the providing the porcine ovaries used in the present study. The authors also thank Dr Randall S. Prather, University of Missouri-Columbia, for providing us with the YWHAG construct for use in our q-RT-PCR experiments, and Alexander Lipka, Purdue University, for helping with the statistical analysis. Funding for this work was provided, in part, by the Agricultural Research Programs office, Purdue University (ARP manuscript #2008–18310).
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