Utility of FT-IR imaging spectroscopy in estimating differences between the quality of bovine blastocysts

Abstract

This study was conducted to verify whether the FT-IR spectroscopy and Focal Plane Array (FPA) imaging can be successfully applied to estimate the quality of bovine blastocysts (on the basis of the concentration of nucleic acids and amides). The FT-IR spectra of inner cell mass from blastocysts of three different culture systems were examined. The spectral changes between blastocysts were analyzed in DNA (spectral range of 1240–950cm−1) and protein amides (1800–1400cm−1).Blastocyst 1 (BL1-HA) was developed from the fertilized oocyte cultured with low concentration of hialuronian (HA), Blastocyst 2 and 3 were developed from the oocytes cultured in standard conditions. Cleavage stage blastocyst 2 (BL2-SOF) has been cultured in SOF medium while blastocyst 3 (BL3-VERO) was cultured in co-culture with VERO cells.The multivariate statistical analysis (Hierarchical Cluster Analysis – HCA and Principal Component Analysis – PCA) of single cells spectra showed high similarity of cells forming the inner cell mass within single blastocyst. The main variance between the three examined blastocysts was related to amides bands. Differences in the intensities of the amides’ peaks between the bovine blastocysts derived from different culture systems indicated that specific proteins reflecting the appearance of a new phenotype were produced. However, for the three blastocysts, the α-helix typical peak was twice more intensive than the β-sheet typical peak suggesting that the differentiation processes had been started. Taking into account the quantitative and qualitative composition of the protein into examined blastocysts, it can be assumed, that the quality of the BL1-HA turned out much more similar to BL3-VERO than to BL2-SOF.FT-IR spectroscopy can be successfully applied in reproductive biology research for quality estimation of oocytes and embryos at varied stages of their development. Moreover this technique proved to be particularly useful when the quantity of the available material for research purposes is limited.