Different environmental stresses can activate the expression of a heat shock gene in rabbit blastocysts

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Abstract
We have utilized the rabbit 6‐day blastocyst as a model system in which to examine the effect of environmental stress on embryonic gene expression. Elevation of the incubation temperature from 37 to 43 °C, exposure to 50 μM sodium arsenite or mechanical injury (resulting in the structural collapse of the 6–day rabbit blastocyst) was found to depress total protein synthesis as well as enhance the synthesis of a 70,000‐dalton stress‐induced protein. The molecular mass of this stress protein is similar to a heat shock protein (HSP) found in other eukaryotic systems. A recombinant DNA probe consisting of the 5′ end of a mouse gene for a 70,000‐dalton HSP hybridized to RNA isolated from heat shocked, sodium arsenite‐treated, and mechanically injured blastocysts but not to RNA isolated from control embryos. These results as well as in vitro translation data suggest that the expression of the 70 K HSP is controlled at the transcriptional level. The levels of actin mRNA, as detected by means of a recombinant DNA probe encoding a Drosophila actin gene, did not undergo a major alteration following these different stresses. The relevance of these observations to embryonic cellular homeostatis is discussed.