Evaluate the developmental competence of human 8-cell embryos by single-cell RNA sequencing.

Many females are suffering infertility due to the failure of embryonic development at early stages due to unknown causes. At the very beginning of human embryo development, the embryos start to express its own genes, which should be achieved at 8-cell stage. In current research, we isolated one cell from 8-cell embryos and detected the gene expression at single-cell level. Then the remaining cells of these embryos were cultured to form blastocyst. Meanwhile, the data was analyzed according to the outcomes of embryo development. We detected 324 differently expressed genes between the 8-cell embryos that succeeded and failed to form blastocyst. Our research showed the association between the gene expression and the developmental competence of 8-cell embryos. The findings could be used to predict the embryo quality and potential therapy target to improve the efficiency of assisted reproductive techniques.