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Public Library of Science, PLoS ONE, 7(6), p. e21741, 2011

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0021741

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Highly Asynchronous and Asymmetric Cleavage Divisions Accompany Early Transcriptional Activity in Pre-Blastula Medaka Embryos

Journal article published in 2011 by Michael Kraeussling, Toni Ulrich Wagner, Manfred Schartl ORCID
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

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Abstract

In the initial phase of development of fish embryos, a prominent and critical event is the midblastula transition (MBT). Before MBT cell cycle is rapid, highly synchronous and zygotic gene transcription is turned off. Only during MBT the cell cycle desynchronizes and transcription is activated. Multiple mechanisms, primarily the nucleocytoplasmic ratio, are supposed to control MBT activation. Unexpectedly, we find in the small teleost fish medaka (Oryzias latipes) that at very early stages, well before midblastula, cell division becomes asynchronous and cell volumes diverge. Furthermore, zygotic transcription is extensively activated already after the 64-cell stage. Thus, at least in medaka, the transition from maternal to zygotic transcription is uncoupled from the midblastula stage and not solely controlled by the nucleocytoplasmic ratio.