BioProject

In mammals, meiotically competent oocytes develop cyclically during ovarian folliculogenesis. More...

In mammals, meiotically competent oocytes develop cyclically during ovarian folliculogenesis. During their development, prophase I arrested oocytes are highly  transcriptionally active in preparation for the resumption of meiosis  and early stages of embryogenesis prior to the maternal to zygotic transition. Defective oocyte development during folliculogenesis leads to meiotic defects, aneuploidy, follicular atresia, or non-viable embryos. SUMOylation, a dynamic post-translational protein modification, is essential for oocyte development during folliculogenesis and to regulate meiotic maturation in mice. We generated a novel oocyte-specific knockout of Ube2i, the sole SUMO E2 ligase, to test its role growing ovarian follicles using Zp3-cre. Ube2i Zp3-cre+ female mice are sterile with oocytes with defects in meiotic progression but not meiotic resumption. Importantly, fully grown oocytes do not silence transcription and prematurely activate the zygotic transcriptional program. This work uncovers unknown functions of UBE2i as a key orchestrator of chromatin and transcriptional regulation in oocytes. Overall design: We performed RNA-sequencing analysis on 17 individual control and 17 individual Ube2i cKO oocytes Less...