Interaction of apoptosis and pluripotency related transcripts for developmental potential of ovine embryos produced at different oxygen concentrations.

The present study in sheep model was to find out the interaction of apoptotic transcripts, that is, and and pluripotency related transcripts, that is, and in ovine embryos produced at different O concentrations (20% and 5% O) to compare their developmental potential. Oxygen concentrations did not influence the maturation and cleavage rate but the percentage of morula and blastocysts was significantly more at 5% as compared to 20% O. A significant upregulated expression of and genes and significantly downregulated expression of and were observed in the blastocysts at 5% than those at 20% O. The expression of was not influenced by the O concentration. Among the pluripotency related transcripts, the expression of was significantly upregulated and the expression of and was significantly downregulated in embryos at 5% than at 20% O. The study concluded that the embryos produced at low O (5%) concentration regulate the expression of developmental genes related to apoptosis and pluripotency to improve the developmental potential of embryos as compared to high O (20%) concentration.