The oocytes of most animals arrest at diplotene or diakinesis, but resume meiosis (meiotic maturation) in response to hormones. In C. elegans, maturation of the 1 oocyte requires the presence of sperm, Gas-adenylate cyclase-PKA signaling in the gonadal sheath cells, and germline function of two Tis11-like CCCH zinc-finger proteins, OMA-1 and OMA-2 (OMA proteins). Prior studies indicate that the OMA proteins redundantly repress the translation of specific mRNAs in oocytes (
zif-1,
mom-2,
nos-2,
glp-1) and early embryos (
mei-1). We purified OMA-1-containing ribonucleoprotein particles (RNPs) and identified mRNAs that associate with OMA-1 in oocytes using microarrays. We examined the relative abundances of mRNAs in OMA-1 RNPs using high-throughput RNA sequencing. Previously identified targets of OMA-dependent translational repression in oocytes were found to be both enriched (>2-fold relative to input RNA) and abundant in purified OMA-1 RNPs. Furthermore, we verified that some of the newly identified mRNAs that share these characteristics are translationally repressed by OMA-1/2 in oocytes through sequences in their 3UTRs. Although meiotic maturation is stimulated by sperm, we found that the mRNAs copurifying with OMA-1 are not significantly different in the presence and absence of sperm, suggesting that sperm-dependent signaling does not modify the suite of mRNAs stably associated with OMA-1. Further, several tested OMA-1-associated mRNAs were shown to be translationally repressed in both the presence and absence of sperm.