Compared to other mammalian species

Compared to other mammalian species, porcine oocytes and embryos are characterized by large amounts of lipids stored mainly in the form of droplets in the cytoplasm. The amount and the morphology of LD change throughout the preimplantation development however, relatively little is known about expression of genes involved in lipid metabolism of early embryos. We compared porcine and bovine blastocyst stage embryos as well as dissected inner cell mass (ICM) and trophoblast (TE) cell populations with regard to lipid droplet storage and expression of genes functionally annotated to selected lipid Gene Ontology terms using RNA-seq. more...