Transcription profiling of Drosophila embryos shows the zinc finger protein Zelda plays a key role in the maternal to zygotic transition

ABSTRACT: In all animals, the initial events of embryogenesis are controlled by maternal gene products that are deposited into the developing oocyte. At some point after fertilization, control of embryogenesis is transferred to the zygotic genome in a process called the maternal to zygotic transition (MZT). During this time maternal RNAs are degraded and zygotic RNAs are transcribed1. A long standing question has been, what factors regulate these events? The recent findings that microRNAs and Smaugs mediate maternal transcript degradation brought new life to this old problem2,3, however, the transcription factors that activate zygotic gene expression remained elusive. A clue came from the finding that many early zygotic genes in Drosophila share a cis-regulatory heptamer motif, CAGGTAG and related s

ORGANISM(S): Drosophila melanogaster

SUBMITTER: Christine Rushlow 

PROVIDER: E-GEOD-11231 | biostudies-arrayexpress |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-arrayexpress