Research Paper Volume 12, Issue 4 pp 3950—3961
Advanced maternal age alters expression of maternal effect genes that are essential for human oocyte quality
- 1 Institute of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology, College of Animal Science and Veterinary Medicine, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan 430070, Hubei, China
- 2 Key Laboratory of Agricultural Animal Genetics, Breeding and Reproduction (Huazhong Agricultural University), Ministry of Education, Wuhan 430070, Hubei, China
- 3 Reproductive Medicine Centre, Affiliated Hospital of Qingdao Medical University, Yuhuangding Hospital of Yantai, Yantai 264000, Shandong, China
- 4 National Demonstration Center for Experimental Veterinary Medicine Education, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan 430070, China
Received: September 22, 2019 Accepted: February 4, 2020 Published: February 25, 2020
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.102864How to Cite
Copyright © 2020 Zhang et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
To investigate the effects of maternal age on the quality of oocytes, we used single-cell RNA sequencing to detect global gene transcriptome and identify key genes affected by advanced age in human mature oocytes. We isolated mRNA from mature oocytes obtained from IVF or ICSI patients (three oocytes from younger (≤30 years) and three oocytes from older (≥40 years) patients for scRNA-seq. We identified 357 genes differentially expressed between matured oocytes from older and younger women's. The up-regulated genes were significantly enriched with annotations related to transcriptional activation, oxidative stress and immune function, while down-regulated genes were enriched with catalytic activity. The key candidate gene TOP2B was found by protein interaction network analysis, and knockdown verification on younger mouse matured oocytes showed that TOP2B was a key gene affecting the oocyte quality and early embryo development. These results will contribute new knowledge on the molecular mechanisms of female ovary aging and establish a criterion to evaluate the quality of oocytes in women with advanced maternal age.