7 - Gene expression dynamics during human embryonic development

Summary

Knowledge of human embryo development informs our understanding of the basic science of embryology and clinical applications in assisted reproduction, and may also impact our understanding of pluripotent stem-cell biology. Human embryo development begins with fusion of the egg and sperm, migration and fusion of the gametic pronuclei, and a rapid genome-wide demethylation that passes over the marks of imprinted loci, and reprograms development from that of the gametes to that of an embryo. The authors note that gene and pathway identification, and more informed analysis of genes and pathways, may be optimized through the studies of Sahoo and colleagues. These studies report development of a novel set of tools (termed MiDReG for mining developmentally regulated genes) to first examine Boolean distributions of gene expression and conserved patterns and then to predict intermediate, developmental genes, and gene sets that function specifically to determine fate.