{"doi":"10.1242/dev.200178","title":"DPPA2 and DPPA4 are dispensable for mouse zygotic genome activation and pre-implantation development","abstract":"How maternal factors in oocytes initiate zygotic genome activation (ZGA) remains elusive in mammals, partly due to the challenge of de novo identification of key factors using scarce materials. Two-cell (2C)-like cells have been widely used as an in vitro model in order to understand mouse ZGA and totipotency because of their expression of a group of two-cell embryo-specific genes and their simplicity for genetic manipulation. Recent studies indicate that DPPA2 and DPPA4 are required for establishing the 2C-like state in mouse embryonic stem cells in a DUX-dependent manner. These results suggest that DPPA2 and DPPA4 are essential maternal factors that regulate Dux and ZGA in embryos. By analyzing maternal knockout and maternal-zygotic knockout embryos, we unexpectedly found that DPPA2 and DPPA4 are dispensable for Dux activation, ZGA and pre-implantation development. Our study suggests that 2C-like cells do not fully recapitulate two-cell embryos in terms of regulation of two-cell embryo-specific genes, and, therefore, caution should be taken when studying ZGA and totipotency using 2C-like cells as the model system.","journal":"Development","year":2021,"id":168270,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":31,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.951,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2021-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":696967,"name":"Zhenfei Xie","orcid":"0009-0006-9341-4721","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1647,"name":"Yi Zhang","orcid":"0000-0002-2789-0811","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":551003,"name":"Zhiyuan Chen","orcid":"0000-0002-6756-1895","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":45,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:46:02.603031Z","pmid":"34878123","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}