The leading blastomere of the 2-cell stage parthenogenetic porcine embryo contributes to the abembryonic part first

Abstract

Polarity formation in preimplantation embryos is controversial. To investigate the embryonic-abembryonic axis in the pig, porcine parthenotes were used to prevent the topological change caused by polyspermy as well as to avoid the influences of sperm entry position. For lineage tracing, DiI, a fluorescence dye, was injected into only a blastomere of the 2-cell stage embryos. If the first blastomere to divide was labeled, the embryo was included in the leading group, and while all others were included in the lagging group. In 60.5% of the blastocysts in the lagging group, the progeny of the labeled blastomeres formed the inner cell mass (ICM) and adjacent trophectoderm (TE) hemisphere; 62.1% of the blastocysts in the leading group had progeny of the labeled blastomeres distributed only to the TE (opposite of ICM). The rest of the lagging and leading groups showed random distributions. Unlike murine parthenotes, biased mitochondrial distribution was also found in porcine parthenotes (38.1%). Our findings indicate that the 'leading' blastomere of the 2-cell porcine parthenote forms the distal TE (abembryonic) and that the 'lagging' blastomere forms the remaining portion of the blastocyst, including the ICM (embryonic). Biased distribution of mitochondria in each 2-cell blastomere may contribute partly to this event.