Abstract
Zearalenone (ZEA) is an estrogenic mycotoxin produced by Fusarium fungi commonly found in corn, wheat, and other cereals which can infect food and feed commodities, and ZEA mainly has reproductive toxicity which causes widely reproductive disorders in pigs and other animals. However, the toxicity and the functional ways of ZEA on early embryo development is still unclear. In present study we showed that exposure to ZEA (10 μM) significantly decreased the 2-cell and blastocyst developmental rate in porcine early embryos in vitro. ZEA treatment resulted in the occurrence of oxidative stress, showing with increased reactive oxygen species (ROS) level, following with aberrant mitochondrial distribution. Moreover, we found positive signals of γH2A.X in the ZEA-treated embryos, indicating that ZEA induced DNA damage, and the increased autophagy confirmed this. These results suggested that ZEA induced oxidative stress, which further caused mitochondria dysfunction and DNA damage on early embryonic development. We next investigated the effects of melatonin on the ZEA-treated embryo development, and we found that melatonin supplementation could significantly ameliorate ZEA-induced oxidative stress, aberrant mitochondria distribution and DNA damage. In all, our results showed that ZEA was toxic for porcine embryos cultured in vitro and melatonin supplementation could protect their development from the effects of ZEA.
Highlights
The early embryo development quality is one of the prerequisites for the success of embryo implantation, which is the threshold to determine the further development after implantation (Teh et al, 2016)
We adopted parthenogenetic porcine embryos as a model to explore the toxic effects of ZEA on early embryos, and we explored whether melatonin could alleviate and protect ZEA-effected embryos
Our results showed that melatonin protects early embryo development from the exposure of ZEA by reducing oxidative stress, mitochondria dysfunction and DNA damage
Summary
The early embryo development quality is one of the prerequisites for the success of embryo implantation, which is the threshold to determine the further development after implantation (Teh et al, 2016). The development of mammalian early embryo includes the stages from zygote to blastocyst, while important morphological changes such as cell proliferation, compaction and blastocyst formation are required. Mitochondria are dynamic organelles which are important determinants of oocyte development, fertilization and preimplantation embryo development in mammals (Nagai et al, 2004). They are the primary energy-generating system, which regulate calcium homeostasis, fatty acid oxidation, signal transduction, cell death pathways, and metabolism of Melatonin on ZEA-Exposed Embryos different biomolecules (Romek et al, 2011). Higher ROS may change several redox pathways and may eventually lead to DNA damage and apoptosis of oocytes and embryos (Agarwal et al, 2005)
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