Cracking the egg: molecular dynamics and evolutionary aspects of the transition from the fully grown oocyte to embryo.
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2006 |
| Type | Article in Periodical |
| Magazine / Source | GENES & DEVELOPMENT |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Field | Genetics and molecular biology |
| Keywords | eukaryotic initiation factor-4E; gene expression profiling; maternal effect gene; mRNA stability; multigene family; reproductive isolation; retroelements |
| Description | Fully grown oocytes (FGOs) contain all the necessary transcripts to activate molecular pathways underlying the oocyte-to-embryo transition (OET). To elucidate this critical period of development, an extensive survey of the FGO transcriptome was performed by analyzing 19,000 expressed sequence tags of the Mus musculus FGO cDNA library. A large proportion of identified genes belongs to several gene families with oocyte-restricted expression, a likely result of lineage-specific genomic duplications. Comparison of the FGO and two-cell embryo transcriptomes demarcated the processes important for oogenesis from those involved in OET and identified novel motifs in maternal mRNAs associated with transcript stability. These results implicate conserved pathways underlying transition from oogenesis to initiation of development and illustrate how genes acquire and lose reproductive functions during evolution. |