The Guinea Pig Serves as an Alternative Model to Study Human Preimplantation Development

Preimplantation development is a pivotal phase in human embryogenesis, establishing fundamental lineages and being crucial for overall health. Ethical constraints with human embryos necessitate a model organism, and the guinea pig, with its physiological similarities to humans, emerges as a valuable alternative. This rodent mirrors human preimplantation timing, placental features, and fetal development. Importantly, it serves as a model for studying long-term consequences of prenatal insults. Comparative studies across species, including guinea pigs, are essential for unraveling pluripotency mechanisms, offering insights into conserved and divergent aspects and understanding evolutionary adaptations. Addressing the lack of guinea pig embryonic transcriptomic data, this research employs single-cell RNA sequencing, immunofluorescence, and epigenetic analyses to explore gene expression, metabolic requirements, and X-chromosome inactivation dynamics. The study advances our understanding of early embryogenesis, emphasizing the guinea pig's relevance as a model for developmental and pluripotency research. Overall design: To obtain a comprehensive overview of the spatial-temporal gene expression and lineage dynamics across guinea pig preimplantation development, we sequenced the transcriptomes of individual blastomeres isolated from E3-E6 embryos.