Project description:Evolutionary novelties entail the origin of morphologies that enable new functions. These features can arise through changes to gene function and regulation. One important noveltyis the fused rod at the end of the vertebral column in anurans, the urostyle. This feature is composed of a coccyx and an ossifying hypochord, and both structures ossify during metamorphosis. These experiments reveal that the coccyx and hypochord have two different molecular signatures. ATAC-seq data reveals potential regulatory regions that are observed in proximity to candidate genes identified from RNA-seq.
Project description:Evolutionary novelties entail the origin of morphologies that enable new functions. These features can arise through changes to gene function and regulation. One important noveltyis the fused rod at the end of the vertebral column in anurans, the urostyle. This feature is composed of a coccyx and an ossifying hypochord, and both structures ossify during metamorphosis. These experiments reveal that the coccyx and hypochord have two different molecular signatures. ATAC-seq data reveals potential regulatory regions that are observed in proximity to candidate genes identified from RNA-seq.
Project description:Somites are transient embryonic structures consisting of hundreds of cells that bud off from the anterior tip of the presomitic mesoderm (PSM) on each side of the neural tube. They give rise to the vertebrae and associated skeletal muscles, nerves, and blood vessels. To characterise the transcriptional changes that orchestrate mouse somitogenesis, we have generated coupled RNA-seq and ATAC-seq profiles of individual somites, across embryonic development. We collected the three most posterior pairs of somites, which correspond to those most recently segmented, from embryos containing 8, 18, 21, 25, 27 and 35 pairs of somites. The three somites are labelled I, II and III from the most posterior to the most anterior. From each pair, one somite was used for RNA-seq and the other one for ATAC-seq.