Brief Communications Arising

Nature 442, E3-E4 (13 July 2006) | doi:10.1038/nature04907; Published online 12 July 2006

Embryology: Does prepatterning occur in the mouse egg?

Takashi Hiiragi1, Sophie Louvet-Vallée2, Davor Solter1 and Bernard Maro2,3

Arising from: B. Plusa et al. Nature 434, 391–395 (2005); Plusa et al. reply

A recurring question in developmental biology has been whether localized determinants play any role in mammalian preimplantation development1. This is a controversial issue that brings back the idea of prepatterning2, 3, 4 and is explored further by Plusa et al.5, who claim it is the first cleavage of the mouse zygote that predicts the blastocyst axis, rather than the animal pole or sperm entry point, as previously suggested3. However, other evidence indicates that the blasotcyst axis is not predetermined and there is no prepatterning in the mouse egg6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12. Here we investigate the origin of these different views and conclude that they arise from differences in the data themselves and in their interpretation.

  1. Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology, 79108 Freiburg, Germany
  2. Laboratoire de Biologie Cellulaire du Développement, UMR 7622, CNRS, Université Pierre et Marie Curie, 75252 Paris cedex 05, France
  3. Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Tel Aviv University, Ramat Aviv 69978, Israel

Correspondence to: Takashi Hiiragi1 Email: hiiragi@immunbio.mpg.de

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