Nuclear distribution of the chromatin-remodeling protein ATRX in mouse early embryogenesis

The nucleus of mammalian embryos differs by transcriptional activity at different stages of early development. Here, we studied nuclear distribution of the chromatin-remodeling protein ATRX in pre-implantation mouse embryos. Immunofluorescent staining revealed the changes of ATRX nuclear distribution at the initial stages of early mouse development. At the stage of early zygote, a diffuse ATRX distribution pattern was prevalent. During the course of zygotic genome activation (ZGA), zones of increased ATRX concentration are observed, and they are most expressed in the nuclei of late 2-cell embryos. In the morula stage, the ATRX distribution becomes diffuse again. In zygotes, the patterns of ATRX distribution differ between male and female pronuclei. At all the stages, ATRX concentrates in the DAPI-positive areas of condensed chromatin. The level of colocalization between ATRX and heterochromatin was found the highest at the late 2-cell stage. When transcription was artificially suppressed, the pattern of intranuclear ATRX distribution was mostly determined by the mechanism of inhibitor action rather than the decreased level of transcriptional activity. Thus, the obvious changes of ATRX distribution occur and partially correlate with the main stages of ZGA during mouse early development, but these changes seem to be determined by other processes of structural and functional rearrangements of blastomere nuclei.