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The foundation of maternal factors in sturgeon: from oocyte to embryo
POCHERNIAIEVA, Kseniia Kostyantynivna
The effective application of embryo engineering to endangered sturgeon species requires fundamental knowledge of its embryonic development and information about structure and characteristics of sturgeon oocyte itself. To reveal intracellular geometry, mechanisms of maternal determinants organization and its later reorganization and morphogenetic aspects we used several techniques such as qPCR tomography, inhibition of transcription and visualization of nucleuos. The qPCR tomography was discovered as reliable technique to determine the role of the genes detected in the animal and vegetal hemispheres of the sturgeon oocyte, and to identify profiles of these genes during early developmental stages of sturgeon embryos. The 12 selected maternal genes were investigated. Two groups of transcriptomes categorized as animal or vegetal with evident gradient profile were identified. The primarily germplasm markers such as dnd, vasa, ddx25 were localized toward the extreme vegetal pole. This finding reveals localization of primordial germ cells in the body plan of the sturgeon oocyte. Another aspect of applying such technique was comparative analysis of RNA profiles in the oocyte of distantly-related species Xenopus laevis and Acipenser ruthenus. We found clear similarity in the localization of mRNA molecules in Acipenser ruthenus and Xenopus laevis, which revealed significant aspects of early development that have been conserved during evolution. Such similarities in expression profiles of distantly related species indicate that their ancestors could have arisen from more closely related lineages. The maternal to zygotic transition (MZT) is a separate developmental period that begins with the elimination of maternal transcripts, continues through the production of zygotic transcripts, and concludes with the first major morphological requirement for zygotic transcripts in embryo development.The alpha-Amanitin as transcript inhibition factor was used to determine the zygotic genome switch in sterlet embryos. The transition in sterlet was observed after the tenth cleavage during late blastula, when blastomeres in the animal pole are surpassed 1000 cells. Mid-blastula transition (MBT) in early embryogenesis can be defined as a time point characterized by cell cycle lengthening, loss of synchrony and acquisition of cell motility. We opted to use oocytes of crosses sterlet A. ruthenus and Russian sturgeon Acipenser gueldenstaedtii, since the hybridization results in increased DNA content in their hybrid offspring compared to parental species A. ruthenus making the embryo a useful model for investigation of changes in the timing of early development. Nucleous vizualization by 4'-6-diaminido-2-phenylindole (DAPI) staining showed that cells divided synchronously at a constant rate until MBT at the ninth cell cycle in control sterlet embryos that corresponds to 1000 cell stage (13 hpf). The sterlet x Russian sturgeon hybrid embryos showed transition from synchronous to asynchronous division at the eighth cell cycle which is the 512 cells stage (12 hpf). In both sterlet and hybrid embryos, the transition occurred within 1 h. Thus, our study confirmed hypothesis the MBT in sturgeon is governed by the ratio of nucleus to cytoplasm, which can be controlled using hybridization, induction of polyspermy or injecting plasmid DNA Embryos of sturgeon injected with alpha-Amanitin also showed cell cycle kinetics similar to controls, with no delay or malformation during cleavage, which most likely indicates that MBT in the sturgeon proceeds independently of onset of zygotic transcripts production. The results and observations presented in this study demonstrate the path from an egg to a developed embryo, which are the basis for improving the production methods and preservation of sturgeons listed in the IUCN Red List, and which is equally important, provide the fundamental knowledge about the nature of sturgeons.
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Parent-of-origin contributions to gene expression during sexual plant reproduction
Pitoňak, Oliver ; Honys, David (advisor) ; Fischer, Lukáš (referee)
Sexual reproduction in flowering plants is fundamental to seed formation. After fertilization, the embryo is enclosed and develops in a seed together with a triploid tissue - the endosperm. In animals, early embryogenesis is well-known to be controlled by maternal RNA and proteins deposited in the ovule before fertilization. Even after the activation of zygotic genome, paternal and maternal genome do not play interchangeable roles. A few genes affecting embryo growth and development are transcribed either from maternally or paternally inherited alleles only. Such genes are example of the well-known phenomenon of gene imprinting. In plants, imprinting is well documented in the endosperm. The role of parent-of-origin contributions to gene expression has been studied less extensively in embryo. The aim of this work is to critically assess current knowledge of parent-of-origin contributions to embryo development in different plant species.
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