© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2017 489
F. Pelegri et al. (eds.), Vertebrate Development, Advances in Experimental
Medicine and Biology 953, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-46095-6_10
Chapter 10
Clearance of Parental Products
Petr Svoboda, Helena Fulka, and Radek Malik
Abstract The beginning of development is controlled parentally. For example,
early zygotic proteosynthesis produces proteins encoded by the maternal transcrip-
tome. As parental factors become replaced by factors synthesized in the embryo,
parental developmental control is gradually passed to the embryo. This chapter
focuses on the clearance of parental factors during oocyte-to-embryo transition in
vertebrates. Coordinated removal of parental factors erases ancestral oocyte identity
of the zygote and facilitates reprogramming of gene expression into a state that will
support development of a new organism. Here, we will review functional and mech-
anistic aspects of clearance of selected parental factors from early embryos, includ-
ing different types of maternal RNAs, proteins, erasure of chromatin features of
maternal and paternal genomes, as well as consumption of yolk and elimination of
paternal mitochondria.
Keywords mRNA degradation • Protein degradation • Proteasome • Fertilization
- Maternal • Zygotic • Chromatin • Oocyte • Reprogramming
10.1 Introduction
This chapter summarizes various aspects of clearance of parental products during
oocyte-to-embryo transition (OET, Fig. 10.1). OET is a process during which a fully
grown oocyte undergoes meiotic maturation, fertilization, and zygotic genome acti-
vation (ZGA, sometimes also referred to as midblastula transition (MBT)) and
becomes transformed into a developing embryo.
P. Svoboda (*) • H. Fulka • R. Malik
Institute of Molecular Genetics, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic,
Videnska 1083, 142 20 Prague 4, Czech Republic
e-mail: [email protected]