Figure 5. Initial characterization of Elavl2 knockdown in transgenic mice oocytes. (A) Design of the transgenic RNAi construct. A putative polyA signal was mutated in the inverted repeat sequence (pZP3-Elavl2-IR). (B) Elavl2 mRNA downregulation in fully grown GV oocytes from transgenic (TG) mice. Data from 4 independent RT-PCR experiments represent the mean Elavl2 expression ± s.e.m. normalized to Hprt1. Relative Elavl2 expression in wild-type (WT) oocytes was set to one. (C) Western blot of ELAVL2 protein expression in fully grown GV oocytes from WT and TG mice. One hundred and fifty oocytes were loaded per lanes. (D) An average litter size of WT and TG females below 20-weeks-of-age. Each mean value (± s.e.m) represents an average of 18 litters. (E) The average number of MII oocytes obtained from superovulated WT (n = 10) and TG (n = 10) mice younger and older than 20 weeks. (F) The average number of fully grown GV oocytes recovered from WT (n = 15) and TG (n = 23) mice younger and older than 20 weeks. (G) The ratio of NSN and SN oocytes obtained from WT (n = 13) and TG (n = 23) females is similar for all animals. One-tailed t test was used for statistical analysis. P < 0.05, 0.01, and 0.001 were denoted by 1, 2, and 3 asterisks, respectively.