Dynamics and Clinical Relevance of Maternal mRNA Clearance during Oocyte-to-embryo Transition in Human

Maternal mRNA clearance is an essential process during maternal-to-zygotic transition (MZT) in all animal model systems being investigated. However, the dynamics, functional importance, and pathological relevance of maternal mRNA decay in human preimplantation embryos has not been specifically analyzed. In this study, we defined and characterized the zygotic genome activation (ZGA)-dependent and -independent maternal mRNA clearance during human MZT, and demonstrated that subgroups of human maternal transcripts were sequentially removed by maternal (M)- and zygotic (Z)-decay pathways before and after ZGA.