| First Author | Huang Y | Year | 2017 |
| Journal | Elife | Volume | 6 |
| PubMed ID | 28323615 | Mgi Jnum | J:258154 |
| Mgi Id | MGI:6141700 | Doi | 10.7554/eLife.22345 |
| Citation | Huang Y, et al. (2017) Stella modulates transcriptional and endogenous retrovirus programs during maternal-to-zygotic transition. Elife 6:e22345 |
| abstractText | The maternal-to-zygotic transition (MZT) marks the period when the embryonic genome is activated and acquires control of development. Maternally inherited factors play a key role in this critical developmental process, which occurs at the 2-cell stage in mice. We investigated the function of the maternally inherited factor Stella (encoded by Dppa3) using single-cell/embryo approaches. We show that loss of maternal Stella results in widespread transcriptional mis-regulation and a partial failure of MZT. Strikingly, activation of endogenous retroviruses (ERVs) is significantly impaired in Stella maternal/zygotic knockout embryos, which in turn leads to a failure to upregulate chimeric transcripts. Amongst ERVs, MuERV-L activation is particularly affected by the absence of Stella, and direct in vivo knockdown of MuERV-L impacts the developmental potential of the embryo. We propose that Stella is involved in ensuring activation of ERVs, which themselves play a potentially key role during early development, either directly or through influencing embryonic gene expression. |
