Compared to other mammalian species, porcine oocytes and embryos are characterized by large amounts of lipids stored mainly in the form of droplets in the cytoplasm. The amount and the morphology of lipid droplets (LD) change throughout the preimplantation development, however, relatively little is known about expression of genes involved in lipid metabolism of early embryos. We compared porcine and bovine blastocyst stage embryos as well as dissected inner cell mass (ICM) and trophoblast (TE) cell populations with regard to lipid droplet storage and expression of genes functionally annotated to selected lipid gene ontology terms using RNA-seq. Comparing the number and the volume occupied by LD between bovine and porcine blastocysts, we have found significant differences both at the level of single embryo and a single blastomere. Aside from different lipid content, we found that embryos regulate the lipid metabolism differentially at the gene expression level. Out of 125 genes, we found 73 to be differentially expressed between entire porcine and bovine blastocyst, and 36 and 51 to be divergent between ICM and TE cell lines. We noticed significant involvement of cholesterol and ganglioside metabolism in preimplantation embryos, as well as a possible shift towards glucose, rather than pyruvate dependence in bovine embryos. A number of genes like DGAT1, CD36 or NR1H3 may serve as lipid associated markers indicating distinct regulatory mechanisms, while upregulated PLIN2, APOA1, SOAT1 indicate significant function during blastocyst formation and cell differentiation in both models.
Keywords: RNA-seq; blastocyst; cattle; gene expression; lipid droplet; lipid metabolism; parthenogenesis; pig.