A set of 1542 mouse blastocyst and pre-blastocyst genes with well-matched human homologues

GenBank contains 57,151 Expressed Sequence Tags (EST) derived from 11 preimplantation embryo mouse cDNA libraries ranging from the 2-cell embryo to the blastocyst. EST were matched to UniGene clusters to identify a composite set of 11,291 UniGenes. These 11,291 UniGenes were screened using HomoloGene to identify a subset of 3467 mouse UniGenes with matches in at least two other species, one of which was human. Of the 3467 matches, 1542 are for named human proteins. Four of the 11 preimplantation embryo libraries were for blastocysts and contain 22,307 EST. These blastocyst EST generate 5762 UniGenes, of which 2246 have matches in at least two other species. Of the 2246 matches, 1170 are for named human proteins. Comparison of the expression profile of the blastocyst set with a similarly derived set from the mouse oocyte identified a number of transcripts that are significantly up-regulated during preimplantation development. The set of named blastocyst and pre-blastocyst genes complements the similar set published recently for the mouse oocyte. They provide a database for identifying signalling pathways that may play a role in determining cell fate in preimplantation embryo development.