Comparison of animal-blastomeres' RNA content to vegetal-most half of vegetal blastomeres' RNA content at the 8-cell stage of Xenopus laevis embryos to identify animal-enriched transcripts

In Xenopus laevis, a number of studies identified vegetal factors that specify the germ line, endoderm and dorsal axis, but there are few studies demonstrating roles for animal-enriched maternal mRNAs. Therefore, we carried out a microarray analysis to identify novel maternal transcripts enriched in animal blastomeres. We sought to maximize differences between animal and vegetal samples. To that end, we dissected 8-cell embryos into animal blastomeres and vegetal blastomeres, and further dissected the vegetal blastomeres into vegetal-most halves (VP) and equatorial regions (discarded).