Fig. 6: Postnatal Nat10 ablation led to defective oocyte meiotic maturation.

a The gross morphology of oocytes collected at the time points as indicated for GV (0 h), and cultured in vitro for MI (6 h) and MII (16 h) from PMSG-primed WT and Nat10-ZcKO females. Scale bar, 100 μm. b, c Percentage of oocytes at GVBD in b and MII in c after the release of GV oocytes cultured in IBMX-containing medium from PMSG-primed WT and Nat10-ZcKO females. Data are presented as mean ± SEM, n = 3. **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001 by two-tailed Student’s t-test. d Average numbers of superovulated oocytes at MII from WT (30.57 ± 0.92) and Nat10-ZcKO (3.8 ± 1.15) mice following PMSG and hCG injection in vivo. Data are presented as the mean ± SEM, n = 5. ***p < 0.001 by two-tailed Student’s t-test. e and f Immunofluorescence staining images of superovulated oocytes collected at 16 h after hCG injection by α-TUBULIN staining. Oocytes with MI arrest, Anaphase-to-telophase arrest in prophase I (AI-TI), and aberrant spindles were observed e and counted f in Nat10-ZcKO mice. Scale bar, 40 μm. Data are presented as the mean ± SEM, n = 3. ***p < 0.001 by two-tailed Student’s t-test. g, h Representative gross morphology of preimplantation embryos at various stages as indicated derived from superovulated WT and Nat10-ZcKO oocytes (after hCG priming) fertilized with WT sperm in (g). Arrows point to the blastocysts; a quantitative comparison of the average numbers of preimplantation embryos at varied stages was shown in (h). Scale bar, 100 μm. Data are presented as the mean ± SEM, n = 5. ****p < 0.0001 by two-tailed Student’s t-test. n = 3 biologically independent samples were included in each group (a, e, g). Source data are provided as a source data file.