Abstract
Paraquat (PQ) is a widely used non-selective and oxidizing herbicide in farmland, orchards, flower nursery, and grassland. Overuse of PQ will accumulate in the body and affect the reproduction in mammals. In this study, we found that PQ could reduce the female fertility by oral administration for 21 days in mice. PQ exposure could impair the nuclear maturation by perturbing the spindle assembly and kinetochore–microtubule attachment to cause the misaligned chromosomes during meiosis. In the meantime, PQ exposure disturbed the mitochondrial distribution and enhanced the level of reactive oxygen species and early apoptosis, which thereby deteriorated the early embryo development. Also, PQ administration could cause some changes in epigenetic modifications such as the level of H3K9me2 and H3K27me3. Therefore, PQ administration reduces the female fertility by impairing the nuclear and cytoplasmic maturation of oocytes in mice.
Highlights
More and more herbicides are widely used in farmland, orchards, flower nursery, and grassland, especially in developing countries
We elucidated the effects of PQ on mouse oocytes and offspring from the following aspects: oocyte maturation; rates of fertilization and early embryo development; litter size; spindle morphologies and chromosome alignment; kinetochore and microtubule (K-M) attachments; mitochondrion-related functions including redistribution, oxidative stress, and apoptosis; and epigenetic modifications
All these combined data indicate that PQ exposure impairs the oocyte quality to damage female fertility via affecting the nuclear and cytoplastic maturation of oocytes
Summary
More and more herbicides are widely used in farmland, orchards, flower nursery, and grassland, especially in developing countries. Paraquat (PQ; 1,1’-dimethyl-4,4’-bipyridinium dichloride) is an effectively and widely non-selective, water-soluble herbicide. PQ can affect the proliferation and differentiation of neural stem cells and the expression of neuronal differentiation-related genes (Huang et al, 2019). PQ exposure increases the mitochondrial fragmentation and alters the DNA methylation in human neural stem cells (Xiong et al, 2019). PQ can transform the hypothalamic–pituitary–gonadal (HPG) axis to affect the reproductive functions in Japanese quails (Soni et al, 2019). PQ can Paraquat Affects Female Fertility reduce the in vitro fertilization (IVF) outcomes from oxidative stress (Pang et al, 2019; Kamali et al, 2020)
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