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Developmental events in preimplantation mouse embryos include the first cleavage, the activation of the embryonic genome, the compaction of the blastomeres to form morula (MO), and the formation of the blastocyst (BL). Compaction, the first cell differentiation event in mammalian development, occurs at the late eight-cell stage in the mouse and may be described in terms of some types of morphological change, which involve reorganization within a cell and intercellular reorganization. Surface microvilli became restricted to a few basal sites and to an externally facing (apical) pole. Prior to compaction, the blastomeres are spherical and lack specialized intercellular junctions. During compaction, the cells were flattened against one another, thus maximizing intercellular contact and obscuring intercellular boundaries. It is believed that the events of compaction have an important influence on the processes involved in blastocyst formation, namely the initiation of inner cell mass and trophectoderm differentiation. The inner cell mass will form the future embryo proper, whereas the trophectoderm cells will form only extraembryonic tissues. Compaction is initiated by E-cadherin mediated cell adhesion, which is regulated post-translationally via protein kinase C. With E-cadherin knock-out, maternal E-cadherin is able to mediate the compaction process at the morula stage. Initial adhesion is mediated by homophilic interactions between E-cadherin extracellular domains.In this review, we attempted to describe this process in detail.

To investigate the expression patterns of histone acetyltransferase (GCN5) and histone deacetylase 1 (HDAC1) in preimplantation mouse embryos and the effects of in-vitro cultures on their expressions, immunocytochemistry was used to detect the expressions of GCN5 and HDAC1 in mouse embryos at the stages of two-cell, four-cell, eight-cell, morula and blastocyst in both in-vivo and invitro groups. In in-vivo group, the obvious expressions of GCN5 were observed in the cytoplasm of all kinds of mouse embryos but blastocysts. Meanwhile, HDAC1 was highly expressed in the nuclei of four and eight-cell embryos and morula but mainly seen in the cytoplasm of two-cell embryos. In blastocysts, the HDAC1 fluorescence was limited to the nuclei of trophoblast cells. In in-vitro group, there were no obvious GCN5 expressions in all kinds of embryos and the expression of HDAC1 was significantly reduced although its expression pattern was similar to that of in-vivo group. Those results showed that in -vitro culture environments could inhibit GCN5 expression and decrease the expression of HDAC1 in mouse preimplantation embryos, which might affect the correct embryonic gene expression.