Fig. 1: Histone Kcr is critical for early embryonic development in mice. | Nature Communications

Fig. 1: Histone Kcr is critical for early embryonic development in mice.

From: Echs1-mediated histone crotonylation facilitates zygotic genome activation and expression of repetitive elements in early mammalian embryos

Fig. 1

A Immunofluorescence staining and mean fluorescence intensities (MFI) of H3K9cr, H3K27ac, H3K18la and H3K9bhb in early 2-cell embryos treated by sodium crotonate (Cro), sodium acetate (Ace), sodium lactate (Lac), or β-hydroxybutyric acid (Bhb) from early zygote stage (n = 18). Scale bars: 20 μm. B, C qRT-PCR showed the expression of Mervl (B) and Zscan4 (C) in early 2-cell embryos treated with epigenetic metabolites (n = 30). D Immunofluorescence co-staining and Pearson correlation analysis of EU and H3K9cr signals in early 2-cell embryos, the experiment was conducted with three independent biological replicates, (n = 28). CI: confidence interval. Scale bars: 20 μm. E Genomic view of H3K9cr occupancy in GV oocyte and preimplantation embryo by IGV browser. F Spearman correlation analysis of genome-wide H3K9cr read counts at various developmental stages. G The number of H3K9cr peaks at different genomic regions including promoter, intron, exon, UTR and distal regions across various developmental stages. H Heatmap shows hierarchical clustering of H3K9cr intensity at promoter regions across developmental stages, with row-normalized values color-coded. Representative genes in each cluster were marked. Three gene clusters with similar H3K9cr change patterns were named ‘MAT-CRO’, ‘E2C-CRO’, and ‘L2C-CRO’. Boxplots display H3K9cr intensity trends for each cluster during embryonic development, the boxplot composition (centre line: median; box limits: quartile 1 and quartile 3, and whiskers showing the maximum and minimum values). On the right are GO analysis results for the three gene classes and a dot plot of H3K9cr intensity normalized count changes for typical maternal and ZGA genes. I–K Metaplots display the average Pol II (I) or H3K9cr (J) enrichment signals at TSS and TES of all genes or ‘E2C-CRO’ group genes in early 2-cell embryos treated with DRB. In early 2-cell embryos treated with sodium crotonate (K), metaplots showed higher enrichment signals of Pol II at TSS regions of all genes or ‘E2C-CRO’ group genes. In (A), (B) and (C), data were presented as Mean ± SD of three independent replicates, and statistical evaluation was performed by two-tailed unpaired Student’s t-test. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.

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