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Cleavage in most animals segregates cells containing germ plasm from other cells. The germ plasm effectively turns off gene expression to render the genome of the cell inert. Cells expressing germ plasm become primordial germ cells (PGCs) which will then give rise to the gametes. The germ line development in mammals, on the other hand, occurs ...
Primordial germ cells are among the first lineages that are established in development [1] and they are the precursors for gametes. [2] It is thought that the process of primordial germ cell migration itself has been conserved rather than the specific mechanisms within it, as chemoattraction and repulsion seem to have been borrowed from blood cells, neurones, and the mesoderm. [1]
In mammals, a few cells of the early embryo are induced by signals of neighboring cells to become primordial germ cells. Mammalian eggs are somewhat symmetrical and after the first divisions of the fertilized egg, the produced cells are all totipotent. This means that they can differentiate in any cell type in the body and thus germ cells.
While the cuboidal hypoblast cells delaminate ventrally, away from the embryonic pole, to line the blastocoele, the remaining cells of the inner cell mass, situated between the hypoblast and the polar trophoblast, become the epiblast and comprise columnar cells. In the mouse, primordial germ cells are specified from epiblast cells. [4]
Later studies found that the process from primordial germ cell to spermatogonial development is gradual, without clear gene expression markers to distinguish the precursor cells. [2] A 2006 study found that some gonocytes differentiate straight into committed spermatogonia (type B) rather than spermatogonial stem cells (type A).
In the mouse, primordial germ cells arise from the inner cell mass (the epiblast) as a result of extensive genome-wide reprogramming. [22] Reprogramming involves global DNA demethylation facilitated by the DNA base excision repair pathway as well as chromatin reorganization, and results in cellular totipotency. [23] [20]
These cell divisions are usually rapid with no growth so the daughter cells are half the size of the mother cell and the whole embryo stays about the same size. They are called cleavage divisions. Mouse epiblast primordial germ cells (see Figure: "The initial stages of human embryogenesis") undergo extensive epigenetic reprogramming. [16]
In 1817, Heinz Christian Pander discovered three primordial germ layers while studying chick embryos. Between 1850 and 1855, Robert Remak had further refined the germ cell layer (Keimblatt) concept, stating that the external, internal and middle layers form respectively the epidermis, the gut, and the intervening musculature and vasculature.
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