Sperm-carried RNAs play critical roles in mouse embryonic development

// Lei Guo 1, * , Shi-Bin Chao 2, 3, * , Lu Xiao 4 , Zhen-Bo Wang 2, 5 , Tie-Gang Meng 2, 4 , Yuan-Yuan Li 2 , Zhi-Ming Han 2 , Ying-Chun Ouyang 2 , Yi Hou 2 , Qing-Yuan Sun 2, 5 and Xiang-Hong Ou 1 1 Center for Reproductive Medicine, Guangdong Second Provincial General Hospital, Guangzhou 510317, PR China 2 State Key Laboratory of Stem Cell and Reproductive Biology, Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, PR China 3 The ART Center, Jiujiang Maternal and Child Health Care Hospital, Jiangxi 332000, PR China 4 Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Nanfang Hospital, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou 510515, PR China 5 College of Life Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, PR China * These authors have contributed equally to this work Correspondence to: Xiang-Hong Ou, email: ouxianghong2003@163.com Qing-Yuan Sun, email: sunqy@ioz.ac.cn Keywords: sperm RNA, RNase, intracytoplasmic sperm injection, blastocyst formation, offspring Received: March 28, 2017      Accepted: May 22, 2017      Published: June 27, 2017 ABSTRACT Recently, numerous studies have reported that the mature sperm contains both coding and non-coding RNAs and the sperm delivers some RNAs to the oocyte at fertilization. However, the functions of the RNAs carried to the oocyte by sperm at fertilization in embryonic development remains a mystery. In this study, the mature spermatozoa were treated with lysolecithin, pronase and RNases (RNase A and RNase H) to remove the sperm-carried RNAs, and then injected into normal mature oocyte. The results showed that after the treatment, the content of the sperm RNAs was decreased by about 90%. The blastocyst formation rate and the live birth rate of the embryos from intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) using the treated sperm were significantly decreased ( P 0.05), but the body weight of F1 mice from sperm-treated group was lower than that in control group after two weeks of birth ( P <0.05). These results demonstrated that the sperm-carried RNAs have important roles in embryonic development.