RNA-seq of mouse individual epithelial somites through development

Somites are transient embryonic structures consisting of hundreds of cells that bud off from the anterior tip of the presomitic mesoderm 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.