Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Mitogen-Activated Protein Kinase (Mapk) Pathways Mediate Embryonic Responses To Culture Medium Osmolarity By Regulating Aquaporin 3 And 9 Expression And Localization, As Well As Embryonic Apoptosis., Christine E Bell, Nathalie M K Larivière, Patricia H Watson, Andrew J Watson

Obstetrics & Gynaecology Publications

BACKGROUND: In order to advance the development of culture conditions and increase the potential for supporting normal preimplantation embryo development in vitro, it is critical to define the mechanisms that early embryos utilize to survive in culture. We investigated the mechanisms that embryos employ in response to culture medium osmolarity. We hypothesized that mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) pathways mediate responses to hyperosmotic stress by regulating Aquaporin (AQP) 3 and 9 expression as well as embryonic apoptosis.

METHODS: Real-time reverse transcription and polymerase chain reaction and whole-mount immunofluorescence were used to determine the relative mRNA levels and protein localization patterns of …

Snai1 And Snai2 Are Asymmetrically Expressed At The 2-Cell Stage And Become Segregated To The Te In The Mouse Blastocyst., Christine E Bell, Andrew J Watson

Obstetrics & Gynaecology Publications

SNAI1 and SNAI2 are transcription factors that initiate Epithelial-to-Mesenchymal cell transitions throughout development and in cancer metastasis. Here we show novel expression of SNAI1 and SNAI2 throughout mouse preimplantation development revealing asymmetrical localization of both SNAI1 and SNAI2 in individual blastomeres beginning at the 2-cell stage through to the 8-cell stage where SNAI1 and SNAI2 are then only detected in outer cells and not inner cells of the blastocyst. This study implicates SNAI1 and SNAI2 in the lineage segregation of the trophectoderm and inner cell mass, and provides new insight into these oncogenes.