Thanks Jon but browsing the paper suggests it is about post-fertilization and not about expression in oocytes.

Dear Mark,

You may find this "doi:10.1038/nprot.2007.331" (Expression cloning of membrane proteins in Xenopus oocytes) useful.

Good luck in your research and if you find wright answer kindly share with me.

Dear Mark, check on Ncbi some papers from Jullien J & Gurdon J. it should answer to your "problem". I do not remember precisely which paper talk about that , but I'm almost sure that transcription in oocyte would not be silent.

I followed, 2 years ago, a conference of Jullien J in Paris, and I remember that transcription in oocyte is active. Good Luck

Thanks Pierluigi!

Haploid genes can be expressed. So transcription in oocyte and sperm is active.

Dear Mark, this paper should answer to your question:

Stable intronic sequence RNA (sisRNA), a new class of noncoding RNA from the

oocyte nucleus of Xenopus tropicalis.

Eugene J. Gardner,1 Zehra F. Nizami,1 C. Conover Talbot Jr,2 and Joseph G. Gall1,3

In the papaer above, at least nasp (histone H1-binding protein) and ccne1

(cyclin E1) are strongly transcribed in the oocyte...Than, there are a lot of ref. for other papers.