Project description:Critical roles for DNA methylation in embryonic development are well established, but less is known about the roles of DNA methylation during trophoblast development, the extraembryonic lineage that gives rise to the placenta. Here we dissected the role of DNA methylation in trophoblast development by performing mRNA and DNA methylation profiling of Dnmt3a/3b-null trophoblast. We find that most gene deregulation is explained by an erasure of maternal methylation in the oocyte, but partially independent of loss of imprinting of the trophoblast-essential Ascl2 gene. Our results reveal that maternal DNA methylation controls multiple differentiation and physiological processes in trophoblast via both imprinting-dependent and -independent mechanisms. mRNA-seq and WGBS-seq of maternal Dnmt3a/3b-null trophoblast; mRNA-seq of maternal Ascl2 KO trophoblast
Project description:Critical roles for DNA methylation in embryonic development are well established, but less is known about the roles of DNA methylation during trophoblast development, the extraembryonic lineage that gives rise to the placenta. Here we dissected the role of DNA methylation in trophoblast development by performing mRNA and DNA methylation profiling of Dnmt3a/3b-null trophoblast. We find that most gene deregulation is explained by an erasure of maternal methylation in the oocyte, but partially independent of loss of imprinting of the trophoblast-essential Ascl2 gene. Our results reveal that maternal DNA methylation controls multiple differentiation and physiological processes in trophoblast via both imprinting-dependent and -independent mechanisms.
Project description:PGCs undergo two distinct stages of demethylation before reaching a hypomethylated ground state at E13.5. Stage 1 occurs between E7.25- E9.5 in which PGCs experience a global loss of cytosine methylation. However, discreet loci escape this global loss of methylation and between E10.5-E13.5, stage 2 of demethylation takes place. In this stage these loci are targeted by Tet1 and Tet2 leading to the loss of the remaining methylation and resulting in the epigenetic ground state. Our data shows that Dnmt1 is responsible for maintaining the methylation of loci that escape stage 1 demethylation, and that it functions in a UHRF1 independent manner. Our data further demonstrates that when these loci lose methylation prior to stage 2 it results in early activation of the meiotic program, which leads to precocious differentiation of the germ line resulting in a decreased pool of PGCs in the embryo and subsequent infertility in adult mice.
Project description:Dysregulated extravillous trophoblast invasion and proliferation are known to increase the risk of recurrent spontaneous abortion (RSA); however, the underlying mechanism remains unclear. Herein, in our retrospective observational case-control study we show that villous samples from RSA patients, compared to healthy controls, display reduced succinate dehydrogenase complex iron sulfur subunit (SDHB) DNA methylation, elevated SDHB expression, and reduced succinate levels, indicating that low succinate levels correlate with RSA. Moreover, we find high succinate levels in early pregnant women are correlated with successful embryo implantation. SDHB promoter methylation recruited MBD1 and excluded c-Fos, inactivating SDHB expression and causing intracellular succinate accumulation which mimicked hypoxia in extravillous trophoblasts cell lines JEG3 and HTR8 via the PHD2-VHL-HIF-1α pathway; however, low succinate levels reversed this effect and increased the risk of abortion in mouse model. This study reveals that abnormal metabolite levels inhibit extravillous trophoblast function and highlights an approach for RSA intervention.
Project description:During development and differentiation, enhancers, and not promoters are most dynamic in their DNA methylation status. However, the causal relationship between enhancer activity and methylation is not clear. Here, we describe that during early zebrafish development, enhancer activity has little influence on DNA methylation, and that hypo-methylation is a unique feature of primed enhancers, whereas active enhancers are hyper-methylated. Hypo-methylated enhancers (hypo-enhancers) are enriched close to important transcription factors (TFs) that act later in development, are specifically de-methylated before the maternal-zygotic transition (MZT), and reside in a unique epigenetic environment. Finally, we demonstrate that hypo-enhancers are functionally active and that they are physically associated with the transcriptional start site (TSS) of target-genes, irrespective of target-gene activity. In conclusion, we demonstrate that early development in zebrafish represents a time-window characterized by non-canonical DNA methylation-enhancer relationships, including global DNA hypo-methylation of inactive enhancers and DNA hyper-methylation of active enhancers. DNA methylation profiles of 4 time points during zebrafish early development.