Embryo structure reorganisation reduces the probability of apoptosis in preimplantation mouse embryos
Dawid Winiarczyk
A C , Anna Piliszek A , Silvestre Sampino A , Marek Lukaszewicz B and Jacek Andrzej Modliński A C
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations
A Department of Experimental Embryology, Institute of Genetics and Animal Biotechnology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Jastrzębiec, Poland.
B Department of Animal Improvement and Nutrigenomics, Institute of Genetics and Animal Biotechnology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Jastrzębiec, Poland.
C Corresponding authors. Email: d.winiarczyk@igbzpan.pl; j.a.modlinski@igbzpan.pl
Reproduction, Fertility and Development 33(12) 725-735 https://doi.org/10.1071/RD21074
Submitted: 2 March 2021 Accepted: 29 July 2021 Published: 7 September 2021
Abstract
Programmed cell death plays a key role in mammalian development because the morphological events of an organism’s formation are dependent on apoptosis. In the mouse development, the first apoptotic waves occur physiologically at the blastocyst stage. Cell number and the mean nucleus to cytoplasm (N/C) ratio increase exponentially throughout subsequent embryo cleavages, while cell volume concurrently decreases from the zygote to blastocyst stage. In this study we tested the hypothesis that reorganisation of the embryo structure by manipulating cell number, the N/C ratio and the cell volume of 2-cell embryos may result in the earlier and more frequent occurrence of apoptosis. The results indicate that doubling (‘Aggregates’ group) or halving (‘Embryos 1/2’ group) the initial cell number and modifying embryo volume, ploidy (‘Embryos 4n’ group) and the N/C ratio (‘Embryos 2/1’ group) reduce the probability of apoptosis in the resulting embryos. There was a higher probability of apoptosis in the inner cell mass of the blastocyst, but apoptotic cells were never observed at the morula stage in any of the experimental groups. Thus, manipulation of cell number, embryo volume, the N/C ratio and ploidy cause subtle changes in the occurrence of apoptosis, although these are mostly dependent on embryo stage and cell lineage (trophectoderm or inner cell mass), which have the greatest effect on the probability of apoptosis.
Keywords: embryo, apoptosis, blastocyst, biological clock, preimplantation development, micromanipulation, chimeras.
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