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Updated: Feb 10, 2026

Quantitative Analysis of Protein Expression to Study Lineage Specification in Mouse Preimplantation Embryos
Published on: February 22, 2016
G9a regulates temporal preimplantation developmental program and lineage segregation in blastocyst
Jan J Zylicz1,2,3, Maud Borensztein1,2, Frederick Ck Wong1,2
1Wellcome Trust/Cancer Research United Kingdom Gurdon Institute, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom.
None:
Early mouse development is regulated and accompanied by dynamic changes in chromatin modifications, including G9a-mediated histone H3 lysine 9 dimethylation (H3K9me2). Previously, we provided insights into its role in post-implantation development (Zylicz et al., 2015). Here we explore the impact of depleting the maternally inherited G9a in oocytes on development shortly after fertilisation. We show that G9a accumulates typically at 4 to 8 cell stage to promote timely repression of a subset of 4 cell stage-specific genes. Loss of maternal inheritance of G9a disrupts the gene regulatory network resulting in developmental delay and destabilisation of inner cell mass lineages by the late blastocyst stage. Our results indicate a vital role of this maternally inherited epigenetic regulator in creating conducive conditions for developmental progression and on cell fate choices.
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