The developmental fate of androgenetic, parthenogenetic, and gynogenetic cells in chimeric gastrulating mouse embryos

Both a maternal and a paternal genomic contribution are necessary for completion of embryonic development in the mouse. Parthenogenetic embryos, with only a maternally inherited genome, and androgenetic embryos, with only a paternally inherited genome, fail to develop to term, and these two types of isoparental embryos fail in development in characteristic ways. In this paper we describe the construction of chimeras between single androgenetic, parthenogenetic, and gynogenetic blastomeres and normal eight-cell embryos. We allow the development of the chimeras to reach the late-gastrulating-stage embryo and then analyze the tissue distributions of the isoparental component. The isoparental embryos are derived from a transgenic mouse line carrying plasmid and mouse beta-globin sequences. The isoparental cells are detected in histological sections of chimeras by DNA-DNA in situ hybridization to the transgene, using a biotinylated DNA probe with an enzymatic detection system. We found strong tissue preferences for the androgenetic, parthenogenetic, and gynogenetic cells in chimeras. Androgenetic cells contributed strongly to all trophectoderm-derived tissue, with only a rare contribution to any tissues of the embryo proper, extraembryonic mesoderm, or extraembryonic endoderm. Parthenogenetic cells shared a developmental fate similar to gynogenetic cells, contributing to all tissues of the embryo proper and to the extraembryonic mesoderm, but only rarely to the extraembryonic endoderm or to any trophectoderm-derived tissues.