Somatic development initiates from the epiblast in post-implantation mammalian embryos. Recent establishment of epiblast stem cell (EpiSC) lines has opened up new avenues of investigation of the mechanisms that regulate the epiblast state and initiate lineage-specific somatic development. Here, we investigated the role of cell-intrinsic core transcriptional regulation in the epiblast and during...

molecular mechanism(s) of the regulation of Otx2 expression remains to be elucidated. We previously identified the cis-element that drives Otx2 expression in the forebrain and midbrain from E8.5, termed FM enhancer. In this study, we showed that the 157-bp core sequence in the FM enhancer was sufficient for the activation of reporter gene expression in the forebrain and midbrain. The core seque...

The homeobox transcription factor orthodenticle homolog 2 (otx2) is supposed as an organizer that orchestrates a transcription factor network during photoreceptor development. However, its regulation in the process remains unclear. In this study, we have identified a zebrafish limb bud and heart-like gene (lbh-like), which is expressed initially at 30 hours post fertilization (hpf) in the devel...

INTRODUCTION Proliferative vitreoretinopathy (PVR) is a severe inflammatory complication of retinal detachment. Pathological epiretinal membranes grow on the retina surface leading to contraction, and surgery fails in 5% to 10% of the cases. We evaluated the expression of VEGF-A, Otx1, Otx2, Otx3, and p53 family members from PVR specimens to correlate their role in inducing or preventing the pa...

Previous studies suggested that the Otx2 gene plays an essential role in the development of cranial skeletons and nerves of mesencephalic neural crest origin. To clarify this role, we have identified the cis-acting elements in mouse and pufferfish Otx2 genes responsible for the expression in the crest cells using a transgenic approach with the lacZ reporter gene. In mouse, 49 bp sequences in th...

The isthmic organizer, which patterns the anterior hindbrain and midbrain, is one of the most studied secondary organizers. In recent years, new insights have been reported on the molecular nature of its morphogenetic activity. Studies in chick, mouse and zebrafish have converged to show that mutually repressive interactions between the homeoproteins encoded by Otx and Gbx genes position this o...

We have characterised a short (30 base pair) element from the Xenopus Wnt-5a promoter which is nearly identical to one located in the human Wnt-5a promoter, and has the same position relative to the transcription start site. When placed in front of a LacZ gene, this element can reproduce the same expression pattern observed for Wnt-5a at the late gastrula stage. Further we show that gastrula st...

INTRODUCTION From work carried out largely by Alain Prochiantz and his co-workers at the College de France (Sugiyama et al., 2008; Beurdeley et al., 2012; Carlier et al., 2013; Smythies and Edelstein, 2013; Spatazza et al., 2013a,b), it is now known that the homeoprotein and transcription factor molecule Otx2 possesses a very unusual property. This flexible molecule is able to cross cell membra...

ABSTRACT In mammals, the pre-gastrula proximal epiblast gives rise to primordial germ cells (PGCs) or somatic precursors in response BMP4 and WNT signaling. Entry into germline requires activation of a naïve-like pluripotency gene regulatory network (GRN). Recent work has shown that suppression OTX2 expression by allows develop PGC fate precise temporal window. However, mechanisms which suppres...

To screen candidate methylation markers for early detection of breast cancer and to explore the relationship between methylation and gene expression, we performed methylated-CpG island recovery assay (MIRA) combined with CpG island array on 61982 CpG sites across 4162 genes in 10 cancerous and 10 non-cancerous breast tissues. Direct bisulfite sequencing and combined bisulfite restriction analys...