Figure 4.

Expression of bovine MATER in oocytes and preimplantation embryos. Developmental stages are immature oocytes (IO), in vitro matured oocytes (MO), in vitro cultured zygote (1C), 2-, 4-, 5- to 8- cell embryos, morula (mo), expanded blastocysts (EB) and hatched blastocysts (HB). (A) Quantification of the messenger RNA using real-time PCR. Relative level to immature oocytes is shown (mean ± SEM). In late stage embryos, transcript level is indicated but too low to be seen on the histogram. Different superscripts indicate a significant difference (P ≤ 0.05). (B) Detection of the protein by Western blot; α-TUBULIN is shown as a positive control.