DNA methylation and gene expression changes derived from assisted reproductive technologies can be decreased by reproductive fluids

Abstract

The number of children born since the origin of Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ART) exceeds 5 million. The majority seem healthy, but a higher frequency of defects has been reported among ART-conceived infants, suggesting an epigenetic cost. We report the first whole-genome DNA methylation datasets from single pig blastocysts showing differences between in vivo and in vitro produced embryos. Blastocysts were produced in vitro either without (C-IVF) or in the presence of natural reproductive fluids (Natur-IVF). Natur-IVF embryos were of higher quality than C-IVF in terms of cell number and hatching ability to. RNA-Seq and DNA methylation analyses showed that Natur-IVF embryos have expression and methylation patterns closer to in vivo blastocysts. Genes involved in reprogramming, imprinting and development were affected by culture, with fewer aberrations in Natur-IVF embryos. Methylation analysis detected methylated changes in C-IVF, but not in Natur-IVF, at genes whose methylation could be critical, such as IGF2R and NNAT.

Data availability

The following data sets were generated

Article and author information

Author details

  1. Sebastian Canovas

    Physiology of Reproduction Group, Departamento de Fisiología, Facultad de Veterinaria, Universidad de Murcia, Murcia, Spain
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  2. Elena Ivanova

    Epigenetics Programme, The Babraham Institute, Cambridge, United Kingdom
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  3. Raquel Romar

    Physiology of Reproduction Group, Departamento de Fisiología, Facultad de Veterinaria, Universidad de Murcia, Murcia, Spain
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  4. Soledad García-Martínez

    Physiology of Reproduction Group, Departamento de Fisiología, Facultad de Veterinaria, Universidad de Murcia, Murcia, Spain
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  5. Cristina Soriano-Úbeda

    Physiology of Reproduction Group, Departamento de Fisiología, Facultad de Veterinaria, Universidad de Murcia, Murcia, Spain
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  6. Francisco Alberto A García-Vázquez

    Physiology of Reproduction Group, Departamento de Fisiología, Facultad de Veterinaria, Universidad de Murcia, Murcia, Spain
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  7. Heba Saadeh

    Epigenetics Programme, The Babraham Institute, Cambridge, United Kingdom
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  8. Simon Andrews

    Bioinformatics Group, The Babraham Institute, Cambridge, United Kingdom
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  9. Gavin Kelsey

    Epigenetics Programme, The Babraham Institute, Cambridge, United Kingdom
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-9762-5634
  10. Pilar Coy

    Physiology of Reproduction Group, Departamento de Fisiología, Facultad de Veterinaria, Universidad de Murcia, Murcia, Spain
    For correspondence
    pcoy@um.es
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-3943-1890

Funding

Research Councils UK

  • Gavin Kelsey

Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (AGL2012-40180-C03-01 and AGL2015-66341-R)

  • Pilar Coy

Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte (PRX14/00348)

  • Pilar Coy

Fundación Séneca. Región de Murcia. Spain (20040/GERM/16)

  • Pilar Coy

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Reviewing Editor

  1. Jessica K Tyler, Weill Cornell Medicine, United States

Ethics

Animal experimentation: This study was carried out in strict accordance with the recommendations in the Guiding Principles for the Care and Use of Animals (DHEW Publication, NIH, 80-23). The protocol was approved by the Ethical Committee for Experimentation with Animals of the University of Murcia, Spain (Project Code: 192/2015).

Version history

  1. Received: November 26, 2016
  2. Accepted: January 28, 2017
  3. Accepted Manuscript published: January 30, 2017 (version 1)
  4. Accepted Manuscript updated: February 1, 2017 (version 2)
  5. Version of Record published: March 7, 2017 (version 3)
  6. Version of Record updated: April 11, 2017 (version 4)

Copyright

© 2017, Canovas et al.

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.

Metrics

  • 4,198
    views
  • 931
    downloads
  • 109
    citations

Views, downloads and citations are aggregated across all versions of this paper published by eLife.

Download links

A two-part list of links to download the article, or parts of the article, in various formats.

Downloads (link to download the article as PDF)

Open citations (links to open the citations from this article in various online reference manager services)

Cite this article (links to download the citations from this article in formats compatible with various reference manager tools)

  1. Sebastian Canovas
  2. Elena Ivanova
  3. Raquel Romar
  4. Soledad García-Martínez
  5. Cristina Soriano-Úbeda
  6. Francisco Alberto A García-Vázquez
  7. Heba Saadeh
  8. Simon Andrews
  9. Gavin Kelsey
  10. Pilar Coy
(2017)
DNA methylation and gene expression changes derived from assisted reproductive technologies can be decreased by reproductive fluids
eLife 6:e23670.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.23670

Share this article

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.23670

Further reading

    1. Developmental Biology
    Amandine Jarysta, Abigail LD Tadenev ... Basile Tarchini
    Research Article

    Inhibitory G alpha (GNAI or Gαi) proteins are critical for the polarized morphogenesis of sensory hair cells and for hearing. The extent and nature of their actual contributions remains unclear, however, as previous studies did not investigate all GNAI proteins and included non-physiological approaches. Pertussis toxin can downregulate functionally redundant GNAI1, GNAI2, GNAI3, and GNAO proteins, but may also induce unrelated defects. Here, we directly and systematically determine the role(s) of each individual GNAI protein in mouse auditory hair cells. GNAI2 and GNAI3 are similarly polarized at the hair cell apex with their binding partner G protein signaling modulator 2 (GPSM2), whereas GNAI1 and GNAO are not detected. In Gnai3 mutants, GNAI2 progressively fails to fully occupy the sub-cellular compartments where GNAI3 is missing. In contrast, GNAI3 can fully compensate for the loss of GNAI2 and is essential for hair bundle morphogenesis and auditory function. Simultaneous inactivation of Gnai2 and Gnai3 recapitulates for the first time two distinct types of defects only observed so far with pertussis toxin: (1) a delay or failure of the basal body to migrate off-center in prospective hair cells, and (2) a reversal in the orientation of some hair cell types. We conclude that GNAI proteins are critical for hair cells to break planar symmetry and to orient properly before GNAI2/3 regulate hair bundle morphogenesis with GPSM2.

    1. Computational and Systems Biology
    2. Developmental Biology
    Gang Xue, Xiaoyi Zhang ... Zhiyuan Li
    Research Article

    Organisms utilize gene regulatory networks (GRN) to make fate decisions, but the regulatory mechanisms of transcription factors (TF) in GRNs are exceedingly intricate. A longstanding question in this field is how these tangled interactions synergistically contribute to decision-making procedures. To comprehensively understand the role of regulatory logic in cell fate decisions, we constructed a logic-incorporated GRN model and examined its behavior under two distinct driving forces (noise-driven and signal-driven). Under the noise-driven mode, we distilled the relationship among fate bias, regulatory logic, and noise profile. Under the signal-driven mode, we bridged regulatory logic and progression-accuracy trade-off, and uncovered distinctive trajectories of reprogramming influenced by logic motifs. In differentiation, we characterized a special logic-dependent priming stage by the solution landscape. Finally, we applied our findings to decipher three biological instances: hematopoiesis, embryogenesis, and trans-differentiation. Orthogonal to the classical analysis of expression profile, we harnessed noise patterns to construct the GRN corresponding to fate transition. Our work presents a generalizable framework for top-down fate-decision studies and a practical approach to the taxonomy of cell fate decisions.