| Summary: | At present, as the specification of germ cell in mouse well established, mechanisms of genetic and epigenetic regulation during germ cell development become important. Because whether they are identical in other mammals was unclear, detecting the expression of genes which are identified in mouse embryo in pig seems necessary. This project aims to investigate the expression of porcine PGC markers, trace PGC movement during porcine embryo development and gain understanding of the ontogeny of germ cells in pig. With the gene profiles of porcine, novel potential PGC markers can be identified, e.g., if we get a new antibody with no understanding of expression in pig germ cells, CT-1 (membrane protein) for instance, we can utilize oct-4 (nucleus protein) to identify CT-1. Specially, the approaches of porcine embryonic study can be spreaded to other mammalian species including human, which will facilitate us to understand human germ cell development.
Immunohistochemistry and in situ hybridization were used as main methods to detect gene expression during pig germ cell development in my experiment. The former focuses on cellular gene expression detection while the latter is mainly used to detection the expression in tissues. The immunohistochemistry results show that stella has no expression before E51 including E51, but was detected in foetal ovaries (E75-80). Oct-4 may be expressed in pig foetal testis and adult testis but very few positive cells were detected with the method immunofluorence. Expression of vasa was prior to dazl which is really different from in mouse. Besides, new primary antibody CT-1 was detected in various embryonic days and gonad, especially, it is expressed in E15, which is a really early stage, which suggests that it may be a novel PGC marker for early embryonic stage in pig.
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