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Comment
. 2016 May 5;165(4):777-9.
doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2016.04.042.

Transcriptome Encyclopedia of Early Human Development

Anna Sahakyan  1 , Kathrin Plath  2
Affiliations
Comment

Transcriptome Encyclopedia of Early Human Development

Anna Sahakyan et al. Cell. .

Abstract

Our understanding of human pre-implantation development is limited by the availability of human embryos and cannot completely rely on mouse studies. Petropoulos et al. now provide an extensive transcriptome analysis of a large number of human pre-implantation embryos at single-cell resolution, revealing previously unrecognized features unique to early human development.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. Lineage specification and X chromosome status in human pre-implantation development
A. Mouse and human lineage specification starting from the morula. Mouse pre-implantation development is more rapid than that in human, resulting in different timing of events (E represents embryonic day post fertilization). In early mouse development, lineage segregation is stepwise. First the trophectoderm (TE) and the inner cell mass (ICM) segregate from the morula, later the emergence of the epiblast (EPI) and the primitive endoderm (PE) from the ICM follow. However, humans display a concurrent rather than stepwise lineage segregation where the TE, PE and EPI emerge simultaneously. The mouse time-course is adapted from Chazaud and Yamanaka (2016). B. Violin plots of transcript levels of the long non-coding RNA XIST in gonadal somatic cells or primordial germ cells (PGCs) from female and male embryos using data from Guo et al 2015. Female PGCs express XIST, while male PGCs have detectable but significantly lower XIST expression. C. Schematic depiction of different X chromosome dosage compensation states: (i) in female cells of E3 human pre-implantation embryos, where both X chromosomes are active (green), undergo full transcription (double-headed arrows), display no dosage compensation and no XIST expression; (ii) in E4–E7 cells of the human pre-implantation embryos, exhibiting the newly described dampened X chromosome expression state where both X chromosomes are active, express XIST (gray cloud), but instead of full transcription there is dampened, or lowered, transcription from both X chromosomes (single-headed arrows); (iii) in somatic cells with conventional X chromosome inactivation state, where XIST RNA is expressed from the inactive X chromosome (red), while the other X chromosome is active (green) with full transcription (double-headed arrows).
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