title: A unique mechanism regulating gene expression in 1-cell embryos.
abstract: After fertilization, the genome of zygotes is transcriptionally silent. The timing of the initiation of transcription is species-specific and occurs at the mid-1-cell stage in mice. Recent analyses using high-throughput sequencing (HTS) have identified thousands of genes transcribed at the 1-cell stage, and the pattern of expression among these genes appears to be unique. In this article, we show the result of an additional analysis using HTS data from a previous study, and present the hypothesis that an extremely loose chromatin structure causes promiscuous gene expression in 1-cell embryos.
authors.affiliation: Department of Integrated Biosciences, Graduate School of Frontier Sciences, University of Tokyo, Chiba 277-8562, Japan.
authors.forename: Ryoma
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Yamamoto
authors.forename: Fugaku
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Aoki
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001755:Blastocyst / Q000378:metabolism; D002843:Chromatin / Q000378:metabolism; D004622:Embryo, Mammalian / Q000378:metabolism*; D005306:Fertilization; D005786:Gene Expression Regulation; D018507:Gene Expression Regulation, Developmental; D059014:High-Throughput Nucleotide Sequencing; D006801:Humans; D051379:Mice; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D009865:Oocytes / Q000378:metabolism; D014158:Transcription, Genetic; D015053:Zygote / Q000378:metabolism*
chemical_list: D002843:Chromatin