Abstract
Oocyte-specific competence remains one of the major targets of current research in the field of reproduction. Several mechanisms are involved in meiotic maturation and the molecular signature of an oocyte is considered to reflect its quality and to predict its subsequent developmental and functional capabilities. In the present minireview, we focus on the possible role of mechanotransduction and mechanosensor signaling pathways, namely the Hippo and the RhoGTPase, in the maturing oocyte. Due to the limited access to female gametes, we propose the use of cells isolated from parthenogenetic embryos as a promising model to characterize and dissect the oocyte distinctive molecular signatures, given their exclusive maternal origin. The brief overview here reported suggests a role of the mechanosensing related pathways in oocyte quality and developmental competence and supports the use of uniparental cells as a useful tool for oocyte molecular signature characterization.
Highlights
It is currently well known that parthenogenesis can spontaneously occur in invertebrates as well as in lower vertebrates
We focus on the results obtained both in the oocyte and in parthenogenetic cells on the rapidly growing research area of mechanotransduction and suggest its possible role in oocyte quality and developmental competence
They showed Yes-associated protein (YAP) and TAZ ability to sense and respond to different stimuli, such as stiffness (Dupont et al, 2011), detachment and attachment proprieties (Zhao et al, 2012), indicating that actin rearrangement may be associated with changes in the Hippo pathway activity. Both Dupont et al (2011) and Zhao et al (2012) demonstrated that the Ras Homolog Family Member A (RhoA) strongly enhances YAP and TAZ activity as well as Rac Family Small GTPase (Rac) and Cell Division Cycle 42 (Cdc42), less potently. All these observations point to a possible role of Ras homologous (Rho) GTPases in regulating dynamics of the cytoskeletal actin (Jaffe and Hall, 2005) and strongly suggest that the same actin may act as a mediator and integrator of various upstream signals of the Hippo pathway
Summary
It is currently well known that parthenogenesis can spontaneously occur in invertebrates as well as in lower vertebrates. Different studies demonstrated that proteins involved in controlling polarity, are able to influence the Hippo pathway activity.
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