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. 2009 Nov 16;4(11):e7844.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0007844.

Transcriptome profiling of human pre-implantation development

Affiliations

Transcriptome profiling of human pre-implantation development

Pu Zhang et al. PLoS One. .

Abstract

Background: Preimplantation development is a crucial step in early human development. However, the molecular basis of human preimplantation development is not well known.

Methodology: By applying microarray on 397 human oocytes and embryos at six developmental stages, we studied the transcription dynamics during human preimplantation development.

Principal findings: We found that the preimplantation development consisted of two main transitions: from metaphase-II oocyte to 4-cell embryo where mainly the maternal genes were expressed, and from 8-cell embryo to blastocyst with down-regulation of the maternal genes and up-regulation of embryonic genes. Human preimplantation development proved relatively autonomous. Genes predominantly expressed in oocytes and embryos are well conserved during evolution.

Significance: Our database and findings provide fundamental resources for understanding

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. Differentially expressed probe sets between consecutive developmental stages.
Figure 2
Figure 2. Biological Process Gene Ontology (GO) terms underrepresented in oocytes and embryos when compared with adult tissues. Colors indicate the significance (p-value) of the underrepresentation.
Figure 3
Figure 3. Dn/ds distribution for chimp (a), dog (b) and mice (c) for the probe sets interrogated by the HG-U133plus2 arrays.
Positive selection signature can be observed in the chimp on the right side of the histogram. (d) Comparison of dn/ds for the chimp between embryo/oocyte specific and adult tissue specific probes. Testing the difference between the distributions with a nonparametric (Mann-Whitney) test yields a median shift of about 15% with a two-tailed significance p-value 10e−16.
Figure 4
Figure 4. Morphology of human oocytes and embryos used in the study.
B. Correlations between biological duplicates.

References

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