MicroRNA-210 Regulates Endoplasmic Reticulum Stress and Apoptosis in Porcine Embryos

Abstract

Endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress can be triggered during in vitro embryo production and is a major obstacle to embryo survival. MicroRNA (miR)-210 is associated with cellular adaptation to cellular stress and inflammation. An experiment was conducted to understand the effects of miR-210 on in vitro embryo development, ER stress, and apoptosis; to achieve this, miR-210 was microinjected into parthenogenetically activated embryos. Our results revealed that miR-210 inhibition significantly enhanced the cleavage rate, blastocyst formation rate, and total cell number (TCN) of blastocysts, and reduced expression levels of XBP1 (p uXBP1, sXBP1, ATF4, and PTPN1) and Caspase 3 and increased the levels of NANOG and SOX2 (p XBP1 compared with other groups (p uXBP1, sXBP1, ATF4, PTPN1, and Caspase 3 and decreased the expression of NANOG and SOX2 (p < 0.05). In conclusion, miR-210 plays an essential role in porcine in vitro embryo development. Therefore, we suggest that miR-210 inhibition could alleviate ER stress and reduce apoptosis to support the enhancement of in vitro embryo production.

Keywords

• miR-210-inhibitor
• miR-210-mimic
• endoplasmic reticulum stress
• apoptosis
• in vitro culture
• parthenogenetic activation