Department of Molecular, Cell and Developmental Biology, University of California, Santa Cruz, 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064, USA.
Nat Commun. 2019 Mar 20;10(1):1271. doi: 10.1038/s41467-019-09141-w.
Paternal epigenetic inheritance is gaining attention for its growing medical relevance. However, the form in which paternal epigenetic information is transmitted to offspring and how it influences offspring development remain poorly understood. Here we show that in C. elegans, sperm-inherited chromatin states transmitted to the primordial germ cells in offspring influence germline transcription and development. We show that sperm chromosomes inherited lacking the repressive histone modification H3K27me3 are maintained in that state by H3K36me3 antagonism. Inheritance of H3K27me3-lacking sperm chromosomes results in derepression in the germline of somatic genes, especially neuronal genes, predominantly from sperm-inherited alleles. This results in germ cells primed for losing their germ cell identity and adopting a neuronal fate. These data demonstrate that histone modifications are one mechanism through which epigenetic information from a father can shape offspring gene expression and development.
父系表观遗传遗传因其日益增长的医学相关性而受到关注。然而，父系表观遗传信息传递给后代的形式以及它如何影响后代的发育仍知之甚少。在这里，我们表明在秀丽隐杆线虫中，传递给后代原始生殖细胞的精子遗传染色质状态会影响生殖细胞的转录和发育。我们表明，缺乏抑制性组蛋白修饰 H3K27me3 的精子染色体通过 H3K36me3 的拮抗作用保持在该状态。H3K27me3 缺失的精子染色体的遗传导致体细胞基因，特别是神经元基因的生殖系去抑制，主要来自精子遗传等位基因。这导致生殖细胞为失去其生殖细胞身份并采用神经元命运做好了准备。这些数据表明，组蛋白修饰是来自父亲的表观遗传信息塑造后代基因表达和发育的一种机制。
