Submitted April 18, 2003
Returned for revision May 16, 2003
Accepted January 2, 2004
Pregnancy
Determination of Genes Involved in the Early Process of
Embryonic Implantation in Rhesus Monkey (Macaca
mulatta) by Suppression-Subtractive Hybridization
Xiao-Yang Sun ,
Fei-Xue Li ,
Jun Li ,
Yin-Fei Tan ,
Yun-Shang Piao ,
Shuang Tang ,
and
Yan-Ling Wang *
* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: wangyl{at}panda.ioz.ac.cn.
Abstract
Embryonic implantation is a temporally and spatially
restricted process that involves a precise "cross-talk"
between the embryo and the receptive maternal
endometrium. Underlying the complex changes in the uterus
during implantation is the alteration in gene expression
pattern, which is not fully understood for the primates.
In the present study, suppression subtractive
hybridization (SSH) was performed to screen genes that
were differentially expressed in the implantation site of
the pregnant rhesus monkey, and a subtractive cDNA
library was constructed. Furthermore, with dot blot
analysis, reverse Northern blot analysis and semi-
quantitative RT-PCR, 76 from 376 clones randomly selected
from the library were proved to be differentially
expressed in the implantation site. With DNA sequencing
and BLAST analysis against the GenBank/EMBL database, it
was demonstrated that the cDNA fragments carried by 73
clones shared high homology with 31 human genes. Among
them, 15 positive clones represented the S100A10 gene,
and 10 positive ones corresponded to the secreted
frizzled-related protein 4 (sFRP4) gene. The other 2
clones shared homology with one human EST. There was 1
clone being homologous to human DNA sequence, which
indicated that it might be a novel gene. To our
knowledge, this is the first report to determine genes
involved in the early implantation stage in the rhesus
monkey with high throughput technology.
Key words:
Embryo •
Implantation •
Uterus
