title: Gene expression atlas for human embryogenesis.
abstract: Human embryogenesis is believed to involve an integrated set of complex yet coordinated development of different organs and tissues mediated by the changes in the spatiotemporal expression of many genes. Here, we report a genome-wide expression analysis during wk 4-9 of human embryogenesis, a critical period when most organs develop. About half of all human genes are expressed, and 18.6% of the expressed genes were significantly regulated during this important period. We further identified >5000 regulated genes, most of which previously were not known to be associated with animal development. Our study fills an important gap in mammalian developmental studies by identifying functional pathways involved in this critical but previously not studied period. Our study also revealed that the genes involved here are distinct from those during early embryogenesis, which include three groups of maternal genes. Furthermore, we discovered that genes in a given developmental process are regulated coordinately. This led us to develop an easily searchable database of this entire collection of gene expression profiles, allowing for the identification new genes important for a particular developmental process/pathway and deducing the potential function of a novel gene. The validity of the predictions from the database was demonstrated with two examples through spatiotemporal analyses of the two novel genes. Such a database should serve as a highly valuable resource for the molecular analysis of human development and pathogenesis.
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Virology, College of Life Sciences, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430072, P.R. China.
authors.forename: Hong
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Yi
authors.forename: Lu
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Xue
authors.forename: Ming-Xiong
authors.initials: MX
authors.lastname: Guo
authors.forename: Jian
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Ma
authors.forename: Yan
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Zeng
authors.forename: Wei
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Jin-Yang
authors.initials: JY
authors.lastname: Cai
authors.forename: Hai-Ming
authors.initials: HM
authors.lastname: Hu
authors.forename: Hong-Bing
authors.initials: HB
authors.lastname: Shu
authors.forename: Yun-Bo
authors.initials: YB
authors.lastname: Shi
authors.forename: Wen-Xin
authors.initials: WX
authors.lastname: Li
mesh_terms: D047108:Embryonic Development / Q000235:genetics / Q000502:physiology*; D020869:Gene Expression Profiling; D018507:Gene Expression Regulation, Developmental / Q000235:genetics / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D020411:Oligonucleotide Array Sequence Analysis; D020133:Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction