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Direct Effects Of Heat Stress During Meiotic Maturation On Bovine Oocyte And Cumulus Rna, Rebecca R. Payton

Doctoral Dissertations

Heat-induced reductions in developmental competence after direct exposure of oocytes to 41ºC have been coincident with reduced protein synthesis. Since heat stress perturbs RNA integrity and polyadenylation in somatic cells, it was hypothesized that heat stress during meiotic maturation may alter RNA within oocytes and/or their surrounding cumulus to account for some of the reductions in development. Initial efforts utilized microcapillary electrophoresis to examine oocyte and cumulus RNA without heat stress as a first step toward transcriptome profile analysis. Size distribution of RNA, rRNA ratio, and other related endpoints differed for oocyte RNA compared to cumulus, and were conserved across …