6 CLONING AND EXPRESSION OF BOVINE FACTOR IN THE GERMLINE ALPHA (FIGLA) IN OOCYTES AND EARLY EMBRYOS: A POTENTIAL TARGET OF microRNA-212

Factor In the GermLine Alpha (FIGLA), a basic helix-loop-helix transcription factor, was first identified in regulating coordinate expression of zona pellucida genes in mice. It plays a crucial role in the formation of primordial follicles and lack of FIGLA in mice alters the expression of many oocyte specific genes that are required for fertilization and early embryonic survival. The objective of this study was to characterise the expression and regulation of bovine FIGLA during early embryogenesis. The cloned bovine FIGLA cDNA is 660 bp in length, which encodes a protein of 165 amino acids. Expression of bovine FIGLA mRNA is restricted to ovarian tissue and can be detected in fetal ovaries harvested as early as 90 days of gestation when primordial follicles start to form. Expression analysis demonstrated that FIGLA mRNA is abundant in germinal vesicle and metaphase II stage oocytes, as well as in embryos from pronuclear to 8-cell stage, but barely detectable in embryos collected at morula and blastocyst stages, suggesting that FIGLA might be a maternal effect gene. Recent studies in zebrafish have highlighted the importance of non-coding small RNAs (microRNAs) as key regulatory molecules targeting maternal mRNAs for degradation during embryonic development. We hypothesised that FIGLA, as a maternal transcript, is regulated by microRNAs during early embryogenesis. Using microInspector, an algorithm for detection of possible interactions between microRNAs and target mRNA sequences, a microRNA binding site (miR-212) was identified in the 3′-UTR of the bovine FIGLA mRNA. Alignment of the 3′-UTR of FIGLA mRNAs from bovine, human and mouse shows complete conservation of the ‘seed’ region indicating that miR-212 might be a post-transcriptional regulator of FIGLA and the microRNA: mRNA interaction is evolutionary conserved. Expression analysis indicates that bovine miR-212 is expressed in oocytes and tends to increase at the 4-cell and 8-cell stage embryos followed by a decline at morula and blastocyst stages, indicating that miR-212 is presumably of maternal origin and potentially involved in maternal transcript degradation during the maternal-to-embryonic transition. To validate the role of miR-212 in silencing FIGLA, a luciferase reporter assay was performed using HeLa cells. The luciferase activity in cells expressing a luciferase construct containing the entire 3′ UTR of bovine FIGLA was suppressed by ∼40% in the presence of miR-212. We also investigated the stability of FIGLA mRNA in cells transfected with bovine FIGLA expression plasmid in the presence or absence of miR-212. Expression of bovine FIGLA mRNA was significantly reduced in the presence of mir-212 compared to control cells transfected with FIGLA construct alone. In summary, our data establish miR-212 as a potential post-transcriptional regulator of FIGLA during the maternal-to-embryonic transition in bovine embryos. Future studies aim to determine if miR-212 mimic can inhibit endogenous FIGLA expression in bovine embryos and its effect on subsequent embryonic development.