Project description:Polycomb group (PcG) proteins are transcriptional repressors important to maintain cell identity during embryonic development. Ezh2, the catalytic subunit of the Polycomb Repressive Complex 2, is responsible for placing the epigenetic repressive mark histone H3 lysine 27 trimethylation (H3K27me3). In contrast to results in mouse models, zebrafish embryos mutant for both maternal and zygotic ezh2 (MZezh2) can form a normal body plan at 1 day post fertilization (dpf) but die at 2 dpf, exhibiting pleiotropic phenotypes. To elucidate the specificity of PcG-mediated repression during early zebrafish development, we conducted in depth analysis of the transcriptome, epigenome, and proteome of the MZezh2 mutant embryos at 1 dpf. We found that, despite modifications in the epigenetic landscape, transcriptome and proteome analysis revealed only minor changes in gene and protein expression levels.
Project description:Embryogenesis entails dramatic shifts in mRNA translation and turnover to account for gene expression differences during proliferation and cellular differentiation. Codon identity modulates mRNA stability during early vertebrate embryogenesis, but how the composition of tRNA pools adapts to the embryo s translational demand is unknown. By quantitatively profiling the tRNA repertoires of zebrafish embryos during the maternal-to-zygotic transition, here we find that maternal and zygotic tRNA pools are distinct. We show that translational activation during embryogenesis and tRNA gene derepression are temporally coordinated by TORC1 activity, which increases at gastrulation and inactivates the RNA polymerase III repressor Maf1a/b in vivo. Reshaping of tRNA pools results in differential tRNA anticodon supply, but these changes do not alter decoding rates in zebrafish embryos. Instead, our data indicate that tRNA repertoires reflect the inherent codon bias of the zebrafish mRNA transcriptome, and tRNA levels are boosted at gastrulation to ensure efficient translation as embryos enter differentiation.
