Establishment of epigenetic landscape during vertebrate early development – Quantitative analysis of histone modifications in medaka embryos

Abstract

After fertilization, the epigenetic modification of a zygote undergoes drastic erasure and re-establishment to acquire totipotency and/or pluripotency. So far, detailed analyses of reprograming of histone modifications have been done mainly in mammals. In the present study, we quantitatively validated the epigenetic reprogramming of histone modifications in medaka embryos by conducting quantitative ChIP-seq (spike-in ChIP-seq), and found that all modifications are erased more or less after fertilization, but that H3K27ac, H3K27me3 and H3K9me3 largely or partially escape erasure.