Wnt signaling in orofacial clefts: crosstalk, pathogenesis and models.

Diverse signaling cues and attendant proteins work together during organogenesis, including craniofacial development. Lip and palate formation starts as early as the fourth week of gestation in humans or embryonic day 9.5 in mice.

Embryo cell allocation patterns are not altered by biopsy but can be linked with further development.

It has been suggested that first embryo cleavage can be related with the embryonic-abembryonic axis at blastocyst stage in mice. Thus, cells of the 2-cell embryo might be already biased to form the inner cell mass or trophectoderm. This study was conducted to observe the possible effects of embryo biopsy on cell allocation patterns during embryo preimplantation in two different mouse strains and the effects of these patterns on further development.

Random Allocation of Blastomere Descendants to the Trophectoderm and ICM of the Bovine Blastocyst.

The first lineage specification during mammalian embryo development can be visually distinguished at the blastocyst stage. Two cell lineages are observed on the embryonic-abembryonic axis of the blastocyst: the inner cell mass and the trophectoderm. The timing and mechanisms driving this process are still not fully understood.

Early epigenetic reprogramming in fertilized, cloned, and parthenogenetic embryos.

Despite ongoing research in a number of species, the efficiency of embryo production by nuclear transfer remains low. Incomplete epigenetic reprogramming of the nucleus introduced in the recipient oocyte is one factor proposed to limit the success of this technique. Nonetheless, knowledge of reprogramming factors has increased-thanks to comparative studies on reprogramming of the paternal genome brought by sperm on fertilization-and will be reviewed here.