Paternal heterochromatin formation in human embryos is H3K9/HP1 directed and primed by sperm-derived histone modifications.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 25519718.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/ncomms6868 and PMC identifier 4284653.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
The different configurations of maternal and paternal chromatin, acquired during oogenesis and spermatogenesis, have to be rearranged after fertilization to form a functional embryonic genome. In the paternal genome, nucleosomal chromatin domains are re-established after the protamine-to-histone exchange. We investigated the formation of constitutive heterochromatin (cHC) in human preimplantation embryos. Our results show that histones carrying canonical cHC modifications are retained in cHC regions of sperm chromatin. These modified histones are transmitted to the oocyte and contribute to the formation of paternal embryonic cHC. Subsequently, the modifications are recognized by the H3K9/HP1 pathway maternal chromatin modifiers and propagated over the embryonic cleavage divisions. These results are in contrast to what has been described for mouse embryos, in which paternal cHC lacks canonical modifications and is initially established by Polycomb group proteins. Our results show intergenerational epigenetic inheritance of the cHC structure in human embryos.
Medical subject headings
- Chromosomal Proteins, Non-Histone
- Heterochromatin
- Histones
- Inheritance Patterns
- Spermatozoa