Native plants ( and ) extracts act as antioxidants to support developmental competence of bovine blastocysts.

OBJECTIVE

() and () are closely involved in anti-oxidative response and increasing antioxidant enzymes activities. However, the effects of their extracts on development of preimplantation bovine embryos have not been investigated. Therefore, we investigated the effects of and extracts on developmental competence and quality of preimplantation bovine embryos.

METHODS

After fertilization, bovine embryos were cultured for 7 days in Charles Rosenkrans amino acid medium supplemented with (0.01 μg/mL) and (0.01 μg/mL). The effect of this supplementation during culture on development competence and antioxidant was investigated.

RESULTS

We observed that the blastocysts rate was significantly increased (p<0.05) in (28.9%±2.9%), (30.9%±1.5%), and a mixture of and (34.8%± 2.1%) treated groups compared with the control group (25.4%±1.6%). We next confirmed that the intracellular levels of reactive oxygen species (ROS) were significantly decreased (p<0.01) in and/or extract treated groups when compared with the control group. Our results also showed that expression of cleaved caspase-3 and apoptotic cells of blastocysts were significantly decreased (p<0.05) in bovine blastocysts derived from both and extract treated embryos.

CONCLUSION

These results suggest that proper treatment with and extracts in the development of preimplantation bovine embryos improves the quality of blastocysts, which may be related to the reduction of ROS level and apoptosis.