UC Irvine

Understanding the molecular mechanisms that govern animal development is one of the major challenges in developmental biology. The TGF-β members such as the bone morophogenetic proteins (BMP) play critical and diverse roles throughout embryonic development in both vertebrates and invertebrates and understanding the mechanisms by which they initiate specific cellular differentiation programs and control of gene expression is important. This dissertation will focus on the characterization of the BMP responsive element (BRE) identified in our lab. Additionally, I will demonstrate that the BRE functions as an activator in BRE-mediated BMP signaling and is responsible for modulating a subset of BMP target genes in mouse embryonic stem (ES) cells. To complement our in vitro studies, our lab also investigated the role of BMPs in early mouse embryonic development. Our studies reveal that BMP signaling may be active in the inner cell mass (ICM) during mouse embryogenesis and is playing a role in sustaining pluriopotency by interacting with the Oct4/Sox2/Nanog network.