Role of ooplasmic segregation in mammalian development

Abstract

A new micromanipulation technique permitted the scrambling of the zygote cytoplasm. Such interference had no effect on preimplantation development, and when zygotes with scrambled cytoplasm were transfered to the pseudopregnant females, normal and fertile mice were born. This demonstrates that no morphogenetic factors are prelocalized in the egg cytoplasm. Cleavage characteristics of mouse embryos provide the evidence that zygote cytoplasm does not define any determinate type of cleavage. We conclude that the mechanism of ooplasmic segregation is not used in the mouse (and presumably mammalian) development. It is suggested that the turning point in the evolution of mammalian embryogenesis was the transition to the intrauterine development, that started the process leading among other changes, to the loss of the ooplasmic morphogenetic determinants.

Keywords: Cell differentiation; Cytoplasm; Evolution; Micromanipulation; Mouse embryo.