{"doi":"10.3389/fcell.2024.1547205","title":"Editorial: Fertilization and early embryogenesis: from research to clinical practice","abstract":"The fusion of an egg and a sperm triggers a complex plethora of events that will ultimately lead to the formation of a new individual. Embryonic development requires the precise orchestration of a formidable number of events. Although our knowledge of the underlying mechanisms involved has significantly increased over the last two decades, new discoveries continue to surprise us, further underlining the complexity and diversity of ontogenesis in different species. The intricacy of events that occur during early development, with the rapid changes in cellular morphology and behavior, may serve as an explanation for the frequent failure of mammalian embryos. This research topic, "Fertilization and early embryogenesis: from Research to clinical practice," is comprised of thirteen publications that cover the complexity of germ cell, embryonic, and fetal development in a diverse number of species, including mice, cattle, pigs, humans, Xenopus, and axolotls. The topics of these papers range from basic research on animal germ cells and embryos to clinical studies on human IVF embryos to placentation and postimplantation events.Five studies focused on chromosomal and epigenetic aspects of early development. These include retrospective and clinical studies in humans. In Sanovec at al., the authors identified a potential new link between chromatin defects and disturbed mobility in sperm. The interaction between the DNA packaging protein protamine 2, nuclear envelope component lamin B2/3, and the cytoskeletal protein septin 12, provide a mechanistical link between abnormal sperm chromatin condensation and altered motility in a mouse model. The authors further provided evidence that a similar connection exists in human sperm. For instance, the altered expression and localization of homologue proteins is associated with low sperm motility known as asthenozoospermia.Embryonic development is known to be prone to errors during chromosome segregation. In the study by Horakova et al., the authors showed that the spindle assembly checkpoint (SAC), a surveillance mechanism that ensures accurate chromosome attachment to spindle microtubules prior to cell division, is not utilized by early mouse embryos. Instead, the blastomeres of 2-cell embryos activate a complex known as the anaphase promoting complex (APC/C) immediately after nuclear envelope breakdown (NEBD). Therefore, the absence of SAC may partially explain the higher frequency of aneuploidy in embryos.In the study by Ma et al., the authors recruited two female patients from a family characterized by recurrent early embryo failure after IVF or ICSI. Using whole-exome sequencing on zygotes, the authors identified a mutation in a gene that encodes for regulator of G protein signaling 12 (RGS12). Phenotypic analysis of oocytes and zygotes from these patients revealed defects in calcium signaling, prolonged CSF arrest, and the inability to activate APC/C sufficiently, resulting in arrest after the 1-cell stage. The authors postulate that the RGS12 gene mutation plays a causal role in recurrent early embryo failure.Human IVF embryos can exhibit unusual patterns of cell division after IVF or ICSI such as fast cell (FC) division to the 3-cell stage via two consecutive divisions or instant direct cleavage (IDC) into 3 blastomeres. The utilization rate of embryos that exert these types of cleavage is not known. In a retrospective study by Nemerovsky et al., the authors show that although FC dividing embryos exhibited reduced development into blastocysts, the pregnancy rate was similar to controls. Most IDC embryos arrested on day 3, and those that developed into blastocysts did not produce a pregnancy. Since blastomeres resulting from fast division might be aneuploid, this illustrates that developing human embryos exhibit a surprising degree of plasticity and redundancy.The review by Montgomery et al. provides an exquisite overview of the developmental dynamics of DNA methylation and the r","journal":"Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology","year":2025,"id":560164,"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":0,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9504,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2025-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":886171,"name":"Kateřina Komrsková","orcid":"0000-0002-6837-2148","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":395451,"name":"Ahmed Z. Balboula","orcid":"0000-0001-9663-6262","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":417695,"name":"Paolo Rinaudo","orcid":"0000-0002-6528-6009","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":377212,"name":"Jason G. Knott","orcid":"0000-0003-1626-7933","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1462286,"name":"Martin Anger","orcid":"0000-0003-0128-1054","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":0,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T02:55:42.883572Z","pmid":"39850801","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":[]}