Abstract

Sodium fluoride (NaF) is used as a medicine to prevent tooth decay; however, excessive NaF could cause a pathological damage to the health. Recent studies showed that NaF impaired mouse oocyte maturation, included of abnormal spindle configuration, actin cap formation, cortical granule-free domain formation, and the following development after fertilization. However, few studies used large animals as models to study the toxicology of NaF on oocytes maturation. We proposed a hypothesis that NaF would affect the nuclear and cytoplasmic maturation of porcine oocytes and DNA methylation pattern of imprinted genes in oocytes. Our results showed that NaF affected cumulus expansion, polar body emission, spindle morphology, cortical granule distribution, early apoptosis, and the following development after parthenogenetic activation during porcine oocyte maturation. Moreover, NaF increased the DNA methylation of NNAT and decreased its expression, which disturbed the glucose transport in oocytes. These results suggest that NaF impairs the porcine oocytes maturation epigenetically, which provides a new toxicological mechanism of NaF on the oocyte maturation.