Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Lorthongpanich, Chanchao
• Cheow, Lih Feng
• Balu, Sathish
• Quake, Stephen R.
• Knowles, Barbara B.
• Burkholder, William F.
• Solter, Davor
• Messerschmidt, Daniel M.

Titel

Single-Cell DNA-Methylation Analysis Reveals Epigenetic Chimerism in Preimplantation Embryos

Ist Teil von

• Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science), 2013-09, Vol.341 (6150), p.1110-1112

Ort / Verlag

United States: American Association for the Advancement of Science

Erscheinungsjahr

2013

Quelle

Science Online_科学在线

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Epigenetic alterations are increasingly recognized as causes of human cancers and disease. These aberrations are likely to arise during genomic reprogramming in mammalian preimplantation embryos, when their epigenomes are most vulnerable. However, this process is only partially understood because of the experimental inaccessibility of early-stage embryos. Here, we introduce a methodologic advance, probing single cells for various DNA-methylation errors at multiple loci, to reveal failed maintenance of epigenetic mark results in chimeric mice, which display unpredictable phenotypes leading to developmental arrest. Yet we show that mouse pronuclear transfer can be used to ameliorate such reprogramming defects. This study not only details the epigenetic reprogramming dynamics in early mammalian embryos but also suggests diagnostic and potential future therapeutic applications.