Metabolism of Preimplantation Embryo Development: A Bystander or an Active Participant?

Metabolism of Preimplantation Embryo Development: A Bystander or an Active Participant? Curr Top Dev Biol. 2016;120:259-310 Authors: Kaneko KJ Abstract Unicellular organisms are exquisitely sensitive to nutrient availability in the environment and have evolved elaborate mechanisms to sense the levels and types of nutrients, altering gene expression patterns accordingly to adjust the metabolic activities required to survive. Thus, environmental cues induce adaptive metabolic differentiation through transcriptional and posttranscriptional changes. Similarly, preimplantation embryos are exposed to various environmental cues within the maternal reproductive tract prior to implantation. Because only "simple" culture conditions are required, it is assumed that these embryos are genetically preprogrammed to develop with little influence from the environment, with the exception of few "necessities" provided by the environment. However, a wealth of literature now suggests that the developing embryos are greatly influenced by the maternal environment. Even though the developing embryos have the capacity and plasticity to deal with nutritional imbalance posed by an altered maternal environment, there is often a trade-off to the overall fitness of those embryos later in life. Despite these studies that underline the general importance of the reproductive environment during development, it is thought that the primary driver of mammalian developme...
Source: Current Topics in Developmental Biology - Category: Biology Authors: Tags: Curr Top Dev Biol Source Type: research