Gurdon, J. B. The developmental capacity of nuclei taken from intestinal epithelium cells of feeding tadpoles. Development 10, 622–640 (1962).

Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

Takahashi, K. & Yamanaka, S. Induction of pluripotent stem cells from mouse embryonic and adult fibroblast cultures by defined factors. Cell 126, 663–676 (2006).

Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

Vastenhouw, N. L., Cao, W. X. & Lipshitz, H. D. The maternal-to-zygotic transition revisited. Development 146, dev161471 (2019).

Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

Despic, V. & Neugebauer, K. M. RNA tales—how embryos read and discard messages from mom. J. Cell Sci. 131, jcs201996 (2018).

Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

Wu, Q. & Bazzini, A. A. Translation and mRNA stability control. Annu. Rev. Biochem. 92, 227–245 (2023).

Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

Eckersley-Maslin, M. A., Alda-Catalinas, C. & Reik, W. Dynamics of the epigenetic landscape during the maternal-to-zygotic transition. Nat. Rev. Mol. Cell Biol. 19, 436–450 (2018).

Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

Zhang, Y. & Xie, W. Building the genome architecture during the maternal to zygotic transition. Curr. Opin. Genet. Dev. 72, 91–100 (2022).

Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

Ing-Simmons, E., Rigau, M. & Vaquerizas, J. M. Emerging mechanisms and dynamics of three-dimensional genome organisation at zygotic genome activation. Curr. Opin. Cell Biol. 74, 37–46 (2022).

Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

Collart, C. et al. High-resolution analysis of gene activity during the Xenopus mid-blastula transition. Development 141, 1927–1939 (2014).

Article  CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

Heyn, P. et al. The earliest transcribed zygotic genes are short, newly evolved, and different across species. Cell Rep. 6, 285–292 (2014).

Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

Owens, N. D. L. et al. Measuring absolute RNA copy numbers at high temporal resolution reveals transcriptome kinetics in development. Cell Rep. 14, 632–647 (2016).

Article  CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

Kwasnieski, J. C., Orr-Weaver, T. L. & Bartel, D. P. Early genome activation in Drosophila is extensive with an initial tendency for aborted transcripts and retained introns. Genome Res. 29, 1188–1197 (2019).

Article  CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

Aoki, F., Worrad, D. M. & Schultz, R. M. Regulation of transcriptional activity during the first and second cell cycles in the preimplantation mouse embryo. Dev. Biol. 181, 296–307 (1997).

Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

Knowland, J. & Graham, C. RNA synthesis at the two-cell stage of mouse development. Development 27, 167–176 (1972).

Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

Vassena, R. et al. Waves of early transcriptional activation and pluripotency program initiation during human preimplantation development. Development 138, 3699–3709 (2011).

Article  CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

Schulz, K. N. & Harrison, M. M. Mechanisms regulating zygotic genome activation. Nat. Rev. Genet. 10, 622 (2018).

Google Scholar 

Leesch, F. et al. A molecular network of conserved factors keeps ribosomes dormant in the egg. Nature 613, 712–720 (2023). This study uses mass spectrometry and cryo electron microscopy to establish that the low translational activity in oocytes and early embryos is caused by the action of four factors that maintain ribosomes in a ‘dormant’ state.

Article  CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

Kobayashi, W. et al. Nucleosome-bound NR5A2 structure reveals pioneer factor mechanism by DNA minor groove anchor competition. Nat. Struct. Mol. Biol. 31, 757–766 (2024).

Article  CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

Michael, A. K. et al. Mechanisms of OCT4-SOX2 motif readout on nucleosomes. Science 368, 1460–1465 (2020).

Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

Echigoya, K. et al. Nucleosome binding by the pioneer transcription factor OCT4. Sci. Rep. 10, 11832 (2020).

Article  CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

Lerner, J., Katznelson, A., Zhang, J. & Zaret, K. S. Different chromatin-scanning modes lead to targeting of compacted chromatin by pioneer factors FOXA1 and SOX2. Cell Rep. 42, 112748 (2023).

Article  CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

Martinez-Sarmiento, J. A., Cosma, M. P. & Lakadamyali, M. Dissecting gene activation and chromatin remodeling dynamics in single human cells undergoing reprogramming. Cell Rep. 43, 114170 (2024).

Article  CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

Garcia, H. G., Tikhonov, M., Lin, A. & Gregor, T. Quantitative imaging of transcription in living Drosophila embryos links polymerase activity to patterning. Curr. Biol. 23, 2140–2145 (2013).

Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

Lucas, T. et al. Live imaging of bicoid-dependent transcription in Drosophila embryos. Curr. Biol. 23, 2135–2139 (2013).

Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

Hoppe, C. et al. Modulation of the promoter activation rate dictates the transcriptional response to graded BMP signaling levels in the Drosophila embryo. Dev. Cell 54, 727–741 (2020).

Article  CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

Pimmett, V. L. et al. Quantitative imaging of transcription in living Drosophila embryos reveals the impact of core promoter motifs on promoter state dynamics. Nat. Commun. 12, 4504 (2021).

Article  CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

Dufourt, J. et al. Imaging translation dynamics in live embryos reveals spatial heterogeneities. Science 372, 840–844 (2021).

Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

Vinter, D. J., Hoppe, C., Minchington, T. G., Sutcliffe, C. & Ashe, H. L. Dynamics of hunchback translation in real-time and at single-mRNA resolution in the Drosophila embryo. Development 148, dev196121 (2021).

Article  CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

Pownall, M. E. et al. Chromatin expansion microscopy reveals nanoscale organization of transcription and chromatin. Science 381, 92–100 (2023). This study describes a new ChromExM method providing higher-resolution insights into nuclear organization and describes the ‘kiss-and-kick’ model of transcriptional activation, where transcriptional elongation kicks (displaces) enhancers away from the promoter.

Article  CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

Bhat, P. et al. SLAMseq resolves the kinetics of maternal and zygotic gene expression during early zebrafish embryogenesis. Cell Rep. 42, 112070 (2023).

Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

Zhang, B. et al. Allelic reprogramming of the histone modification H3K4me3 in early mammalian development. Nature 537, 553–557 (2016).

Article  CAS  PubMed