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. 2022 Feb 15;21(3):e13568. doi: 10.1111/acel.13568

FIGURE 5.

FIGURE 5

Old oocytes show elevated retrotransposon RNA processing activity: Small RNA‐seq was performed in order to quantify the differential presence of small RNAs in young (2‐month‐old) and old (9‐month‐old) oocytes (see Methods and Table S1). (a) Identification of 10 repeat types that are most upregulated or downregulated in old oocytes. Note that the predominant types of repeats that were overexpressed are retrotransposon RNA molecules, while the list of under‐expressed repeat types also includes other types of repeats. (b) Family based analysis of smRNA. The ratio in sequencing reads between old and young in the transcripts of each repeat family are plotted. tRNA and rRNA are used as controls. (c, d) To quantify global RNA processing activity in the aged oocytes, we stained for dsRNA (MW p < 0.0001, N young = 3, N old = 5) (c) and Dicer (MW p < 0.0001, N young = 3, N old = 5) (d) in young and old prophase I‐arrested mouse oocytes. (e) Dicer elevation was confirmed using Western blotting (N young = 6, N old = 8)