Research Paper Volume 11, Issue 18 pp 8015—8034

Figure 6. Effect of circARMC4 knockdown on developmental competence of porcine early embryos. (A) Representative brightfield images of embryos at different developmental stages. GV oocytes were injected with siRNA or water and GV oocytes without any treatment, followed by maturation in vitro for 44 h. Oocytes with first polar body were parthenogenetically activated (n=51, 57, 28) and cultured up to the blastocyst stage. The brightfield images of 2-cell, 4-cell, 8-cell embryo and blastocyst were captured by epifluorescence microscopy. Scale bar: 100 μm. (B) Analysis of the developmental rate of embryos at different developmental stages. The number of embryos at different developmental stages was recorded (2-cell: n=46, 52, 14; 4-cell: n=34, 38, 6; 8-cell: n=28, 33, 2; blastocyst: n=12, 14, 2) and the corresponding data were statistically analyzed by one-way ANOVA. All experiment was repeated three times. The data are shown as mean ± S.E.M and different letters on the bars indicate significant differences (P < 0.05).