Abstract
Accumulating evidence has demonstrated that benzo(a)pyrene (BaP) exposure adversely affects female reproduction, especially oocyte meiotic maturation and subsequent embryo development. Although we previously found that mogroside V (MV), a major bioactive component of S. grosvenorii, can protect oocytes from quality deterioration caused by certain stresses, whether MV can alleviate BaP exposure-mediated oocyte meiotic defects remains unknown. In this study, female mice were exposed to BaP and treated concomitantly with MV by gavage. We found that BaP exposure reduced the oocyte maturation rate and blastocyst formation rate, which was associated with increased abnormalities in spindle formation and chromosome alignment, reduced acetylated tubulin levels, damaged actin polymerization and reduced Juno levels, indicating that BaP exposure results in oocyte nucleic and cytoplasmic damage. Interestingly, MV treatment significantly alleviated all the BaP exposure-mediated defects mentioned above, indicating that MV can protect oocytes from BaP exposure-mediated nucleic and cytoplasmic damage. Additionally, BaP exposure increased intracellular ROS levels, meanwhile induced DNA damage and early apoptosis in oocytes, but MV treatment ameliorated these defective parameters, therefore it is possible that MV restored BaP-mediated oocyte defects by reducing oxidative stress. In summary, our findings demonstrate that MV might alleviate oocyte meiotic defects and quality deterioration in BaP-exposed mice.
Highlights
With the acceleration of urbanization and industrialization, air pollution is becoming an adverse environmental factor that threatens human health (Vineis and Husgafvel-Pursiainen, 2005)
It has been demonstrated that 20 mg/kg body weight BaP exposure inhibits oocyte maturation; this dose was used in our study
(PBE) rate of oocytes in the BaP group was significantly lower than that in the Con group (p < 0.05), suggesting that oocyte maturation is inhibited by maternal BaP exposure
Summary
With the acceleration of urbanization and industrialization, air pollution is becoming an adverse environmental factor that threatens human health (Vineis and Husgafvel-Pursiainen, 2005). PAHs contain a variety of detrimental chemicals, of which benzo(a)pyrene (BaP) is prominent, occupying approximately 50% of their carcinogenic potential. BaP is produced by incomplete combustion of organic materials such as coal, petroleum, wood and organic polymers (Qi et al, 2019). It is released from wildfire, smoking, cooking and other sources of environmental smoke (Jorgensen et al, 2013; Jeffery et al, 2018). BaP exists ubiquitously in air, water and soil (Sverdrup et al, 2002; Baklanov et al, 2006; Lohmann et al, 2009; Sun et al, 2017)
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