Off-campus South Dakota State University users: To download campus access theses, please use the following link to log into our proxy server with your South Dakota State University ID and password.

Non-South Dakota State University users: Please talk to your librarian about requesting this thesis through interlibrary loan.

Document Type

Thesis - University Access Only

Award Date

2018

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department / School

Mathematics and Statistics

First Advisor

Xijin Ge

Keywords

development, DPRX, DUXA, embryo, human, preimplantation

Abstract

In mammals, pre-implantation embryo development (PED) encompasses the time from the fertilization to the placement of blastocyst in the uterus. This period of development goes through dynamic cellular and molecular changes essential for pregnancy. Key regulatory networks for human PED remain unclear. Advances in sequencing technologies allow us to detect molecular signatures of individual cells during PED. We have performed bioinformatic analyses on existing single-cell RNA-sequencing (scRNA-seq) datasets to understand the dynamic gene expression during PED. Analysis of expression profiling of 7500 most changed genes indicated that PRD-like homeobox proteins have a significant impact on the regulation of gene expression during PED. Out of nine PRD-like homeodomain encoding transcription factors (TFs), we have found significant and dynamic expression pattern of three PRD-like TFs (DUXA, DPRX, and ARGFX). Based on clustering analysis, we found significant upregulation of these three genes after 4-cell stage before reducing by the end of morula stage. Tissue-specific expression analysis revealed that our interested genes (DUXA, DPRX, and ARGFX) showed a higher level of expression in the reproductive tissue like testis. We found 18.5% to 27.7% similarity in protein sequences of this three TFs indicating that PRD-class homeodomain has similar characteristics. Phylogenetic analysis of all eleven classes of homeodomain TFs indicated that DUXA, DPRX, and ARGFX located in the PRD-class. Using Ensembl Genome Browser and NCBI database for Entrez Gene we found 11 DUXA pseudogenes, 7 DPRX and 2 ARGFX pseudogenes in human. Chi-squared test with a p-value

Library of Congress Subject Headings

Embryology, Human.
Gene expression.

Description

Includes bibliographical references (pages68-76)

Format

application/pdf

Number of Pages

89

Publisher

South Dakota State University

Share

COinS
 

Rights Statement

In Copyright