2 The landscape of accessible chromatin in bovine oocytes and early embryos

Abstract

Chromatin reorganization governs gene expression regulation during pre-implantation development. However, the global chromatin landscape and its dynamics in this period remain unexplored in bovine. In this study, we constructed a genome-wide map of accessible chromatin in bovine oocytes and early embryos using an improved assay for transposase-accessible chromatin with high-throughput sequencing (ATAC-seq). We analysed pools of 20 germinal vesicles or MII oocytes or 2-, 4-, 8-, 16-cell, morula, and blastocyst stage in vitro-produced embryos. We conducted ATAC-seq on six pools for each stage and an additional four pools of in vivo-derived morula and blastocysts and six replicates using individual Day 14 elongating embryos. We obtained ~110 million paired end reads uniquely mapped to the bovine reference genome for each stage. Hierarchical clustering, t-distributed stochastic neighbour embedding, and principal component analysis showed four distinct patterns for open chromatin status: (1) low accessibility in germinal vesicles and MII oocytes and in 2- and 4-cell embryos; (2) significantly elevated accessibility in 8-cell, 16-cell, and morula embryos; (3) less accessibility in blastocysts; and (4) extremely high accessibility in elongating embryos. This dynamic and sequential chromatin remodelling is consistent with transcription activation during the bovine minor embryonic genome activation from fertilization to 4-cell, major embryonic genome activation at 8-cell, first differentiation at blastocyst and drastic transcription initiation for embryo elongation. Genome-wide characteristics of accessible chromatin showed (1) accessible chromatin near the transcription start sites of active genes and CpG-rich promoters; (2) widespread accessible chromatin regions extensively overlapped with transposable elements; (3) distal peaks preferentially enriched for repeats including LINE, SINE, and LTR from 8-cell to morula embryos, especially for LTR, whereas enrichment in simple repeats were found from oocytes to 4-cell and in elongating embryos; and (4) highly stage-specific transcription factor motifs in distal peaks were unveiled. By integrating the maps of chromatin accessibility with bovine embryo transcriptomes and DNA methylomes, we found promoter accessibility and DNA methylation in bovine embryos correlated with both gene activities and CpG densities. Most importantly, we constructed the regulatory networks of stage-specific expressed genes and stage-specific activated genes with three omics datasets in bovine early embryos and revealed conserved and distinctive transcriptional regulatory networks between in vivo- and in vitro-derived embryos. This comprehensive analysis revealed critical features of the chromatin landscape and epigenetic reprogramming during bovine early embryo development.