Search for the bovine homolog of the murine ped gene and characterization of its messenger RNA expression during bovine preimplantation development. Biol Reprod 70:488– 494

In mice, a gene (Ped: preimplantation embryo development) that regulates preimplantation embryonic growth, including cleavage rate and embryo survivability, has been described. The objective of the current study was to identify the bovine ho-molog of the Ped gene and to characterize the mRNA expression pattern of this gene during bovine preimplantation embryo de-velopment. The NCBI GenBank/EBI expressed sequence tags (EST) databases were searched for bovine ESTs that were ho-mologous to the murine Ped gene, and the resulting ESTs were aligned and assembled into a contiguous sequence. The homol-ogy of the sequence to the murine Ped gene was confirmed. Primers were designed for the sequence, and the mRNA ex-pression pattern was characterized during bovine preimplanta-tion embryo development in vivo and in vitro. In vitro-produce