Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Guest lecture by Dr. Renee Reijo-Pera
Early human embryo development and associated gene expression

We had the privilege of having Dr. Renee Reijo-Pera, the director of the Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research Center at Stanford University, as a guest lecturer in our class. She shared with us her lab's findings in recent years on stem cell research and early human embryo development.

Some of the main topics in her lecture included...
  • Maternal vs. embryonic gene expression - Stages at which maternal mRNAs are active, and then degraded, and at which embryonic mRNAs are synthesized
  • Dynamics of cell division between fertilization and blastocyst stage
  • Prediction, at day 2 of development, of which embryos are viable (will successfully reach blastocyst stage) - Development of an algorithm to make an objective prediction
  • Things we do not know about human embryo development and how stem cell research can help
  • How embryo images were obtained and made into movies to allow analysis of developmental process
  • Analysis of gene expression - analysis of mRNA from 96 selected genes, extracted from a single cell
  • How the development process is correlated with patterns of gene expression
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