Splicing regulation of maternal mRNA precursors during early embryogenesis

• Project/Area Number: 26640128
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: System genome science
• Research Institution: Kobe University
• Principal Investigator: INOUE KUNIO 神戸大学, 理学(系)研究科(研究院), 教授 (40252415)
• Project Period (FY): 2014-04-01 – 2016-03-31
• Project Status: Completed (Fiscal Year 2015)
• Budget Amount: ¥3,900,000 (Direct Cost: ¥3,000,000、Indirect Cost: ¥900,000); Fiscal Year 2015: ¥1,820,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,400,000、Indirect Cost: ¥420,000); Fiscal Year 2014: ¥2,080,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,600,000、Indirect Cost: ¥480,000)
• Keywords: 発生分化 / 母性プログラム / スプライシング

Outline of Final Research Achievements

We confirmed previous reports showing that unspliced squint transcript (pre-mRNA) is maternally supplied in the zebrafish fertilized egg, and that it disappears in the 16-cell stage embryo. We found that squint pre-mRNA injected into the fertilized egg can not be spliced. By contrast, it was spliced efficiently in HeLa cells. Using RNA-seq analyses, we have identified some candidate maternal transcripts that contain retained introns during early embryogenesis.