Translocation of a localized maternal mRNA to the vegetal pole of Xenopus oocytes (original) (raw)

Nature volume 328, pages 80–82 (1987)Cite this article

Abstract

A prominent hypothesis in embryology is that localized maternal factors are important in specifying cell fate. There are, however, only a few examples of maternal molecules that have been shown to be localized and very little is known about how such factors are physically localized within an egg (for review see ref. 1). Previously, cDNA clones were obtained for a class of localized maternal mRNAs from _Xenopus laevis_2. These mRNAs are unusual in that they are concentrated at either the animal or vegetal pole of unfertilized eggs. In the present study the synthesis and intracellular distribution of one of them, Vg1, has been examined during oogenesis. The results show that Vg1 mRNA is localized as a crescent at the vegetal pole of mature oocytes. Surprisingly, this mRNA is uniformly distributed in the cytoplasm of immature oocytes. These findings suggest that a single cell, the frog oocyte, has some mechanism for translocating specific RNAs like Vg1. The process that moves Vgl mRNA is evidently a cytoplasmic localization machinery which is not directly coupled to the synthesis of Vgl RNA.

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  1. Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Harvard University, 7 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138, USA
    D. A. Melton

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Melton, D. Translocation of a localized maternal mRNA to the vegetal pole of Xenopus oocytes.Nature 328, 80–82 (1987). https://doi.org/10.1038/328080a0

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