176 CYTOCHALASIN PREVENTS SPERM HEAD INCORPORATION INTO FERTILIZED PIG OOCYTES

Abstract

At fertilization, an acrosome-reacted sperm fuses to the plasma membrane of the oocyte. It is then internalized into the ooplasm and its head forms the male pronucleus that moves toward the female pronucleus. Experiments using cytochalasin, an inhibitor of actin polymerization, suggest that filamentous actin is necessary for spermatozoa incorporation deep into the oocyte cytoplasm. However, the exact role of actin in the process is not entirely clear and the consequences of inhibiting actin polymerization on embryo development are not known. In the present study, we investigated the effect of cytochalasin B on fertilization and subsequent embryo development in the porcine model. In vitro-matured oocytes were rinsed in fertilization medium, a modified Tris-buffered medium supplemented with 0.1% BSA and 1 mM caffeine. Groups of 30 oocytes were placed into 50-μL droplets of the medium covered with mineral oil. Fresh semen was collected from both a wild-type boar and a transgenic boar heterozygous for the green fluorescent protein (GFP), washed 3 times in Dulbecco's PBS and added at a final concentration of 5 × 10⁵ cells mL^–1 to each droplet containing the oocytes. The gametes were co-incubated for 5 h at 39°C under 5% CO₂ in air. In the treatment group, 10 μg mL^–1 of cytochalasin B was supplemented into the fertilization droplets; control groups received an equivalent amount of dimethyl sulfoxide, the solvent used to dissolve the inhibitor. After gamete co-incubation, potential zygotes were transferred to PZM-3 medium for culture. In experiment 1, mature oocytes were fertilized with the wild-type boar sperm. Embryos at the 6- or 8-cell stage were then collected, the blastomeres were separated and DNA from each blastomere was isolated for PCR analysis to monitor the presence of the male-specific SRY gene. In experiment 2, the GFP transgenic sperm was used for fertilization. Fertilized oocytes were cultured for 7 days and the resultant embryos were examined for GFP expression using an epifluorescence microscope. The developmental stages of the embryos were also determined by staining their nuclei with Hoechst 33342. We found that after cytochalasin B treatment, only 19.1% (21/110) of the blastomeres were positive for the SRY gene, whereas in the control group, SRY was detected in 54.5% (61/112) of the cases. In addition, in the cytochalasin B-treated group, 1.9% (7/376) of the embryos expressed GFP, as indicated by green fluorescence; this percentage was 35.4% (146/412) in the control embryos. The frequency of 2-cell and blastocyst-stage embryos was similar between the control and cytochalasin B-treated groups (84.1 vs 81.0%; and 11.6 vs 12.5%, respectively). The results indicate that the presence of cytochalasin B during fertilization effectively blocks the incorporation of the male nucleus into the newly formed zygote without affecting the developmental potential of the pre-implantation embryo.