Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Comment
. 2016 Aug;32(8):457-458.
doi: 10.1016/j.tig.2016.05.005. Epub 2016 May 30.

Investigations at the 'Four-Front' of Mammalian Development

Amy Ralston  1
Affiliations
Comment

Investigations at the 'Four-Front' of Mammalian Development

Amy Ralston. Trends Genet. 2016 Aug.

Abstract

Understanding how and when cells become different during embryogenesis is a goal that is at the forefront of investigations in mammalian development. Two recent studies from the laboratories of Nicholas Plachta and Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz present evidence that cellular heterogeneities detected in four-cell mouse embryos bias the process of cell fate acquisition thereafter.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. Heterogeneities at the Four-Cell Stage Bias Cell Fate Allocation in the Early Mouse Embryo
Evidence presented in two recent studies leads to a model in which the CARM1 histone arginine methyltransferase increases access of SOX2 to its targets, such as Sox21, which then biases cells to adopt a pluripotent cell fate.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Comment on

References

    1. Chazaud C, Yamanaka Y. Lineage specification in the mouse preimplantation embryo. Development. 2016;143:1063–1074. - PubMed
    1. Shi J, et al. Dynamic transcriptional symmetry-breaking in pre-implantation mammalian embryo development revealed by single-cell RNA-seq. Development. 2015;142:3468–3477. - PubMed
    1. Biase FH, et al. Cell fate inclination within 2-cell and 4-cell mouse embryos revealed by single-cell RNA sequencing. Genome Res. 2014;24:1787–1796. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Piras V, et al. Transcriptome-wide variability in single embryonic development cells. Sci Rep. 2014;4:7137. - PMC - PubMed
    1. White MD, et al. Long-lived binding of Sox2 to DNA predicts cell fate in the four-cell mouse embryo. Cell. 2016;165:75–87. - PubMed

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources