| Budget Amount *help |
¥27,560,000 (Direct Cost: ¥21,200,000、Indirect Cost: ¥6,360,000)
Fiscal Year 2014: ¥10,660,000 (Direct Cost: ¥8,200,000、Indirect Cost: ¥2,460,000)
Fiscal Year 2013: ¥5,200,000 (Direct Cost: ¥4,000,000、Indirect Cost: ¥1,200,000)
Fiscal Year 2012: ¥11,700,000 (Direct Cost: ¥9,000,000、Indirect Cost: ¥2,700,000)
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| Outline of Final Research Achievements |
Early embryogenesis depends on maternal factors present in oocytes. The roles of such factors in embryonic patterning have been well established in Drosophila but remain unclear in mammals. I showed that maternal Nodal signaling is essential for patterning of the mouse pre-implantation embryo. Lack of the Nodal signaling components Foxh1, Smad2, or Nodal in oocytes resulted in loss of toti/pluripotency as well as impaired cell specification before implantation. Genome-wide screening for targets of Nodal signaling in oocytes identified OFT1 and OFT2, the latter of which is implicated in epigenetic regulation. Oocyte-specific deletion of OFT1 or OFT2 recapitulated the defects of the maternal Nodal signaling mutants. My results suggest that epigenetic modification by maternal Nodal signaling regulates toti/pluripotency and cell specification events in the fertilized mouse embryo.
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