Transcriptional activity and nuclear ultrastructure of 8‐cell bovine embryos developed by in vitro maturation and fertilization of oocytes from different growth categories of antral follicles

Abstract The normalcy of nuclear differentiation in 8‐cell bovine embryos derived by in vitro procedures from oocytes isolated from antral follicles of three different size categories was studied using autoradiographic localization of RNA synthesis and fine‐structure nuclear morphology. In the few embryos derived from the oocytes from the small category of follicles (1–2 mm) the unlabeled nuclei prevailed. In contrast, the oocytes isolated from the more progressed follicles (medium and large size: 2–8 mm) yielded embryos with only slight, if at all detectable, differences to the picture expected in in vivo developed normal embryos. The diverging features probably concerned a slower onset of gene transcription, its consecutive pattern of localization as well as less pronounced progress of chromatin condensation and nucleolar differentiation. The assessment of these morphological changes and characteristics for individual embryos was obscured by marked differences in the status of the nuclei of particular blastomeres forming an embryo. Here the differences were seen in the fragmentation of nuclei, in the degree of chromatin condensation and in the absence of the nucleolus‐associated chromatin in some of the blastomeres. It is suggested that most of the embryos from medium and large follicles have a comparable differentiation pattern of nuclear function development as embryos developing normally in vivo. © 1993 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.