Cuckoo egg colour inheritance
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REPOSITORIES: ENA
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Project description:Maternal investment directly shapes early developmental conditions and therefore has long-term fitness consequences for the offspring. In oviparous species prenatal maternal investment is fixed at the time of laying. To ensure the best survival chances for most of their offspring, females must equip their eggs with the resources required to perform well under various circumstances, yet the actual mechanisms remain unknown. Here we describe the blue tit egg albumen and yolk proteome and evaluate its potential to mediate maternal effects. We show that variation in egg composition (proteins, lipids, carotenoids) primarily depends on laying order, female age and paternity (within- versus extra-pair) and that the investment in the egg proteome is functionally biased among eggs. Our results suggest that maternal effects on egg composition result from both passive and active (partly compensatory) mechanisms, and that the between- and within-clutch variation in egg composition creates diverse biochemical environments for embryonic development.
2019-01-07 | PXD009822 | Pride
Project description:Background: Modifications to early development can lead to evolutionary diversification. The early stages of development are under maternal control, as mothers produce eggs loaded with nutrients, proteins and mRNAs that direct early embryogenesis. Maternally provided mRNAs are the only expressed genes in initial stages of development and are tightly regulated. Differences in maternal mRNA provisioning could lead to phenotypic changes in embryogenesis and ultimately evolutionary changes in development. However, the extent that maternal mRNA expression in eggs can vary is unknown for most developmental models. Here, we use a species with dimorphic development— where females make eggs and larvae of different sizes and life-history modes—to investigate the extent of variation in maternal mRNA provisioning to the egg. Results: We find that there is significant variation in gene expression across eggs of different development modes, and that there are both qualitative and quantitative differences in mRNA expression. We separate parental effects from allelic effects, and find that both mechanisms contribute to mRNA expression differences. We also find that offspring of intraspecific crosses differentially provision their eggs based on the parental cross direction (a parental effect), which has not been previously demonstrated in reproductive traits like oogenesis. Conclusion: We find that maternally controlled initiation of development is functionally distinct between eggs of different sizes and maternal genotypes. Both allele-specific effects and parent-of-origin effects contribute to gene expression differences in eggs. The latter indicates an intergenerational effect where a parent’s genotype can affect gene expression in an egg made by the next generation.
2023-04-19 | GSE225230 | GEO
Project description:Multiple mechanisms likely contribute to the increase in chromosome missegregation that leads to production of aneuploid eggs and fetuses at advanced maternal age. It is therefore considered unlikely that a single approach could prevent age-related egg aneuploidy. Here we show using three independent approaches that ovulation reduction is sufficient to prevent egg aneuploidy in aged mammals. To gain insights into the mechanism underlying the rescue in egg aneuploidy, we show that ovulation suppression correlates with retention of chromosomal Rec8-cohesin, implying that ovulations are linked to cohesin deterioration. Moreover, we discovered that ageing alters 3D chromatin organization by single-nucleus Hi-C (snHi-C). Extruded loops increase in size with age and this is retarded by ovulation reduction. We conclude that reducing ovulations leads to retention of chromosomal Rec8, which maintains interphase chromatin structure and promotes chromosome segregation and production of euploid eggs. Importantly, our data suggest that ovulation itself contributes to the maternal age effect. This work provides the first experimental evidence that progesterone treatment reduces egg aneuploidy and suggests that hormonal contraception can reduce the risk of trisomic pregnancies like Down’s syndrome at advanced maternal age.
2021-04-01 | GSE130585 | GEO
Project description:Good quality or developmentally competent eggs result in high survival of progeny. Previous research has shed light on factors that determine egg quality, however, large gaps remain. Initial development of the embryo relies on maternally-inherited molecules, such as transcripts, deposited in the egg, thus, they would likely reflect egg quality. We performed microarray analysis on zebrafish fertilized eggs of different quality from unrelated, wildtype couples to obtain a global portrait of the egg transcriptome to determine its association with developmental competence and to identify new candidate maternal-effect genes. Fifteen of the most differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were validated by quantitative real-time PCR. Gene ontology analysis showed that enriched terms included ribosomes and translation. In addition, statistical modeling using partial least squares regression and genetics algorithm also demonstrated that gene signatures from the transcriptomic data can be used to predict reproductive success. Among the validated DEGs, otulina and slc29a1a were found to be increased in good quality eggs and to be predominantly localized in the ovaries. CRISPR/Cas9 knockout mutants of each gene revealed remarkable subfertility whereby the majority of their embryos were unfertilizable.Our novel findings suggested that even in varying quality of eggs due to heterogeneous causes from unrelated wildtype couples, gene signatures exist in the egg transcriptome, which can be used to predict developmental competence. Further, transcriptomic profiling revealed two new potential maternal-effect genes that have essential roles in vertebrate reproduction.
2019-02-01 | GSE109073 | GEO
Project description:Epigenetic inheritance of heterochromatin requires DNA sequence-independent propagation mechanisms, coupling to RNAi, or input from DNA sequence, but how DNA contributes to inheritance is not understood. Here, we identify a DNA element (termed “maintainer”) that is sufficient for epigenetic inheritance of preexisting histone H3 lysine 9 methylation (H3K9me) and heterochromatin in Schizosaccharomyces pombe, but cannot establish de novo gene silencing in wild-type cells. This maintainer is a composite DNA element with binding sites for the Atf1/Pcr1 and Deb1 transcription factors and the Origin Recognition Complex (ORC), located within a 130-base pair region, and can be converted to a silencer in cells with lower rates of H3K9me turnover, suggesting that it participates in recruiting the H3K9 methyltransferase Clr4/Suv39h. These results suggest that, in the absence of RNAi, histone H3K9me is only heritable when it can collaborate with maintainer-associated DNA-binding proteins that help recruit the enzyme responsible for its epigenetic deposition.
2022-10-14 | PXD027214 | Pride
Project description:Maternal inheritance of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is highly conserved in metazoans. While many species eliminate paternal mtDNA during late sperm development to foster maternal inheritance, the regulatory mechanisms governing this process remain elusive. Through a large-scale genetic screen in Drosophila, we identified 47 mutant lines exhibiting substantial retention of mtDNA in mature sperm. We mapped one line to Poldip2, a gene predominantly expressed in the testis. Disruption of Poldip2 led to pronounced mtDNA retention in mature sperm and subsequent paternal transmission to progeny. Further investigation via imaging, biochemical analyses and ChIP assays revealed that POLDIP2 is a mitochondrial matrix protein capable of binding to mtDNA. Moreover, we uncovered that CLPX, a key component of the major mitochondrial protease, binds to POLDIP2 to co-regulate mtDNA elimination in Drosophila spermatids. This study shed light on the mechanisms underlying mtDNA removal during spermatogenesis, underscoring the pivotal role of this process in safeguarding maternal inheritance.
2024-06-04 | E-MTAB-14100 | biostudies-arrayexpress
Project description:In C. elegans nematodes, components of liquid-like germ granules were shown to be required for transgenerational small RNA inheritance. Surprisingly, we show here that mutants with defective germ granules can nevertheless inherit potent small RNA-based silencing responses, but some of the mutants lose this ability after many generations of homozygosity. Animals mutated in pptr-1, which is required for stabilization of P granules in the early embryo, display extraordinarily strong heritable RNAi responses, lasting for tens of generations. Intriguingly, the RNAi capacity of descendants derived from mutants defective in the core germ granules proteins MEG-3 and MEG-4 is determined by the genotype of the ancestors, and changes transgenerationally. Further, whether the meg-3/4 mutant alleles were present in the paternal or maternal lineages lead to different transgenerational consequences. Small RNA inheritance, rather than maternal contribution of the germ granules themselves, mediates the transgenerational defects in RNAi of meg-3/4 mutants and their progeny. Accordingly, germ granule defects lead to heritable genome-wide mis-expression of endogenous small RNAs. Upon disruption of germ granules, hrde-1 mutants can inherit RNAi although HRDE-1 was previously thought to be absolutely required for RNAi inheritance. We propose that germ granules sort and shape the RNA pool, and that small RNA inheritance maintains this activity for multiple generations.
2019-07-31 | GSE128112 | GEO
Project description:The unparalleled success of the insects comprising more than a million species has long stood out to evolutionary biologists. A much overlooked evolutionary innovation of the insects is the serosa, an extraembryonic epithelium that covers yolk and embryo in their eggs. We have shown that this epithelium provides innate immune protection to eggs of the beetle Tribolium castaneum. It remained elusive, however, if this innate immune competence evolved in the Tribolium lineage, or is ancestral to all insects. Here, we expand our studies to the bug Oncopeltus fasciatus that belongs to the basal main group of insects, the Hemimetabola. RNA sequencing reveals an extensive transcriptional response upon infection of the egg with Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria. We demonstrate the antimicrobial activity of upregulated peptides using in vitro bacterial growth inhibition assays, and describe two novel families of AMPs called Serosins and Ovicins. By qPCR, we determine that eggs become immune responsive when the serosa develops. Finally, in situ hybridizations show that transcripts of upregulated peptides are located in the serosal cells and not in the underlying embryo. We conclude that the serosa protects the O. fasciatus embryo against pathogens. This first evidence from hemimetabolous insect eggs suggests that immune competence is an ancestral property of the serosa. The evolutionary origin of the serosa with its immune function might have been one of the factors that facilitated the spectacular success of the insects.
2019-01-01 | GSE100429 | GEO
Project description:Binning of metagenomic data collected from Lagria villosa beetle eggs
| PRJNA531449 | ENA