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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2015 Dec 15.
Published in final edited form as: Curr Top Dev Biol. 2015 Aug 21;113:271–303. doi: 10.1016/bs.ctdb.2015.07.021

Figure 3.

Figure 3

Scheme of primordial germ cell (PGC) segregation from soma. In Xenopus, the germline is specified through the inheritance of germ plasm formed during oogenesis and asymmetrically segregated into the future germ-cell lineage (black arrows). Endodermal somatic fate is established by the inheritance of maternal somatic transcripts, including VegT (white arrows). Germ cells repress somatic maternal mRNAs. PGCs delay starting mRNA transcription to ensure that somatic differentiation programs remain inactive at the time that zygotic transcription is initiated in the rest of the embryo.