Exit from totipotency in mammals: an epigenetic perspective (opens in new tab)

Totipotency is the ability of a single cell to generate a whole organism and is a property restricted to the cells of the earliest embryonic developmental stages. Interestingly, the process of zygotic genome activation (ZGA), which mediates in the embryo the switch from maternal inherited RNAs to embryonic transcripts, has been associated with the loss of totipotency potential. The exit from totipotency correlates with the quick and efficient silencing of a totipotent-associated stage-specifi...