Histone modifications in the mouse PGCs.. Mus musculus

In mammalian germline, dynamic reprogramming of sex-specific epigenome modifications occurs, and as consequence oocytes and sperms, in which each have unique epigenome modifications, are formed. It has been demonstrated that DNA methylation, a major epigenome modification, is erased in mouse primordial germ cells (PGCs) by E13.5. On the other hand, the PGCs exhibit sex specific gene expression profiles at that stage, indicating that the PGCs have already specified into female and male. The question remained to be clarified is how the sex specific gene expression is regulated in the PGCs. Here, we conducted genome wide histone modification analysis by ChIP-seq in mouse PGCs, and compared to the gene expression, methylation and chromatin accessibility profiles in the genome.