The Best Transcript Between Pluripotency Related Genes for Prediction of Developmental Competency of Bo-vine Nuclear Transfer Derived Embryos

Background: Developmental competency of reconstructed embryos with different types of donor nucleus is often lower than in vivo and in vitro counterparts. Presence of a reliable indicator in level of transcription of donor cell or preimplantation embryo can help to prediction the postimplantation develop-mental fate of cloned embryo.Materials and Methods: In this study, the developmental abil-ity and the pattern of some pluripotency related genes (Oct4, Sox2, Nanog) in bovine cloned embryos reconstructed mes-enchymal stem cells (MSCs), and adult fibroblasts (AF) were compared with in vitro fertilized (IVF) counterparts. For these purposes, in vitro matured abattoir-derived oocytes were con-sidered as recipients and hand-made cloning technique was used for oocyte enucleation and cell attachment in NT proce-dure.Results: Despite the lower developmental rate in NT derived embryos (12.05 and 19.23% For AF- and MSCs-NT derived blastocysts, respectively) than IVF counterparts (26.7% Blas-tocyst rate) (P<0.05), but the use of stem cells improved de-velopmental competency of reconstructed embryos, signifi-cantly (P<0.05). As well as, the relative abundance (RA) of the Oct4 transcripts at the blastocyst stage exhibited higher level of expression in in vitro produced embryos. Though IVF em-bryos did differ significantly higher than AF embryos (P<0.05), whereas no difference was observed between IVF and MSC-NT embryos.Conclusion: By evaluation of the relationship between the ex-pression of genes involved in pluripotency and developmental competency in produced blastocysts, it can be concluded that Oct4 can be regarded as an indicator of the embryos produced quality.