Effect of vitrification temperature and cryoprotectant concentrations on the mRNA transcriptome of bovine mature oocytes after vitrifying at immature stage

The present study aimed to investigate the effect of vitrification temperature (VT) and cryoprotective agent concentrations (CPAs) on the mRNA transcriptome of bovine mature oocytes after vitrifying at immature stage. Cumulus oocyte complexes (COCs) were randomly divided into the following five groups: fresh oocytes (control), oocytes vitrified in liquid helium (LHe; -269 °C) with 5.6 M CPAs (LHe 5.6 M), oocytes vitrified in LHe with 6.6 M CPAs (LHe 6.6 M), oocytes vitrified in liquid nitrogen (LN; -196 °C) with 5.6 M CPAs (LN 5.6 M), and oocytes vitrified in LN with 6.6 M CPAs (LN 6.6 M). We performed two experiments in this study. In experiment 1, after vitrification and thawing, oocytes of vitrified and control groups were subjected to in vitro maturation (IVM), in vitro fertilization (IVF) and in vitro culture (IVC). The rates of normal morphology, maturation, cleavage, and blastocyst formation in LHe 5.6 M were higher than those in LN 5.6 M (P 0.05). The rates of normal morphology and cleavage in LHe 6.6 M were higher than those in LN 6.6 M (P 0.05). However, the maturation and blastocyst rates were similar (P 0.05) between LHe 6.6 M and LN 6.6 M. The blastocyst rate of 13.31% in LHe 5.6 M was the highest among all vitrified groups (P 0.05). In experiment 2, the mRNA transcriptome of each sample was analyzed by Smart-Seq4, and the differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were detected by edgeR (P ≤ 0.05; fold-change ≥ 2). A total of 505 DEGs (342 upregulated and 163 downregulated genes) were detected in LHe 5.6 M; 609 DEGs (493 upregulated and 116 downregulated genes) were detected in LHe 6.6 M; 218 DEGs (101 upregulated and 117 downregulated genes) were determined in LN 5.6 M; and 221 DEGs (104 upregulated and 117 downregulated genes) were detected in LN 6.6 M. LHe vitrification affected the mRNA transcriptome of bovine mature oocytes after vitrifying at immature stage mainly by upregulating gene expression. Decreased CPAs (5.6 M) reduced the effect of vitrification on mRNA transcriptome when LHe vitrification was used. Among the DEGs closely related to bovine oocytes, the genes possibly related to VT were ND2, MPV17L2, PIF1, LPIN1, IMP3, BRD1, DCTN3, DERA, ATP7B, NEK5, HVCN1, and MARK2. The gene that may be associated with CPAs is CC2D2A. Genes that may be affected by VT and CPAs included PGK1, SLC7A3, FITM2, NPM3, ISCU, CWC15, and PSAP.