Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Brown University, Providence, RI 02912, USA.
Development. 2010 Dec;137(24):4113-26. doi: 10.1242/dev.047969.
The germline of multicellular animals is segregated from somatic tissues, which is an essential developmental process for the next generation. Although certain ecdysozoans and chordates segregate their germline during embryogenesis, animals from other taxa segregate their germline after embryogenesis from multipotent progenitor cells. An overlapping set of genes, including vasa, nanos and piwi, operate in both multipotent precursors and in the germline. As we propose here, this conservation implies the existence of an underlying germline multipotency program in these cell types that has a previously underappreciated and conserved function in maintaining multipotency.
多细胞动物的生殖细胞与体细胞组织分离,这是下一代的一个重要发育过程。尽管某些节肢动物和脊索动物在胚胎发生过程中分离生殖细胞,但来自其他分类群的动物在胚胎发生后从多能祖细胞中分离生殖细胞。包括 vasa、nanos 和 piwi 在内的一组重叠基因在多能前体细胞和生殖细胞中都起作用。正如我们在这里提出的那样,这种保守性意味着这些细胞类型中存在一个潜在的生殖细胞多能性程序,它在维持多能性方面具有以前被低估和保守的功能。