RNA synthesis at the two-cell stage of mouse development.

This paper describes a method for quantitative extraction of nucleic acids from cultured pre-implantation mouse embryos in a form suitable for electrophoresis, and its application to the analysis of RNA synthesized during early mouse development. The nucleic acids synthesized by early mouse embryos have been identified by the use of RNase, DNase and mild alkaline hydrolysis. No obvious differences in the kinds of RNA synthesized in the blastocyst, trophoblast or embryonic fibroblast were found. At the two-cell stage of mouse development, which is the earliest that can be successfully labelled with radioactive precursors of RNA, all major RNA classes with similar electrophoretic mobilities to the RNA species of adult cells are synthesized, and it is likely that 28 s and 18 s RNA are synthesized at this stage. It is suggested that the onset of rRNA synthesis may not be associated with a particular stage of embryonic development.