As hereafter described, these results allowed the generation of novel hypotheses on the developmental role of a maternal Oct4 transcriptional inheritance during the early stages of mouse preimplantation development. One marked phenomenon that occurs during the developmental interval comprised between ovulation and EGA is the inactivation or degradation of a considerable number of transcripts mainly by processes of deadenyla tion, but also through the association with RNA binding proteins and elimination by small silen cing RNAs that degrade mRNAs or repress their transla tion. The maternal Oct4 TN that we identified has its maximum expansion in MII oocytes, comprising 182 genes, then, following fertilisation, more than half of these transcripts are markedly down regulated, to become almost undetectable in 2 cell embryos, suggest ing their prompt degradation or deadenylation at the beginning of development.

Interestingly, Inhibitors,Modulators,Libraries this group of genes includes Oct4, Sox2 and Klf4. Oct4, Sox2 and Klf4 are central to the maintenance and promo tion of cell pluripotency. Their down regulation Inhibitors,Modulators,Libraries after fertilisation may signal the execution of the egg develop mental programme, then, at later stages of development, they are re expressed, but only in some blastomeres, namely those that will contri bute to the ICM, to induce their pluripotent status, on the contrary, they are kept down regulated in those cells that will contribute to the trophectoderm. In support of this hypothesis, a recent paper has demonstrated that Oct4 re expression occurs at the 8 cell stage embryo and is dissimilar in single blastomeres, suggesting a possible different developmental commitment.

The developmental block encountered by 2 cellNSN embryos could be associated, to abnormal expression or distribution of transcripts or proteins fol lowing the Cilengitide first segmentation. To this regard, our analysis of DNMT3L and RPS20, whilst demonstrating a differential expression of both transcripts and proteins in 2 cellctrl vs. 2 cellNSN embryos, it did not evidence a dif ferential distribution in the two blastomeres, although, at this stage, we cannot role out this hypothesis because of the low sensitivity power of an immunocyto chemistry analysis. The 80 Oct4 OETN gene transcripts that survive the massive post fertilisation degradation represent the maternal Oct4 TN inheritance that is passed from the MII oocyte to the 2 cell embryo.

Following fertilisation some of the transcripts of these genes might be trans lated and their proteins, together with those of the group Inhibitors,Modulators,Libraries of 15 newly activated genes, may play a role during the following stages of Inhibitors,Modulators,Libraries development. This core Oct4 TN, that shares 37 genes with an OCT4 regulatory network active in ESCs, might represent the molecular signature of maternal origin on which the ESCs molecu lar identity is built up and tailored, thus providing a link between eggs, early preimplantation embryos and ESCs.