Cell fate inclination within 2-cell and 4-cell mouse embryos revealed by single-cell RNA sequencing.

ABSTRACT: It remains an open question when and how the first cell fate decision is made in mammals. Using deep single-cell RNA-seq of matched sister blastomeres, we report highly reproducible inter-blastomere differences among 10 2-cell and five 4-cell mouse embryos. Inter-blastomere gene expression differences dominated between-embryo differences and noise, and were sufficient to cluster sister blastomeres into distinct groups. Dozens of protein-coding genes exhibited reproducible bimodal expression in sister blastomeres, which cannot be explained by random fluctuations. The protein expression of one gene out of four of these bimodal genes tested, Gadd45a, exhibited clear inter-blastomeric contrasts. We traced some of the bimodal mRNA expressions to embryonic genome activation, and others to blasto

SUBMITTER: Biase FH 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4216920 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature