The chronology of developing cells: are epigenomic and transcriptomic oscillations linked to their linear trajectories?
Discuss this preprint
Start a discussion What are Sciety discussions?Listed in
This article is not in any list yet, why not save it to one of your lists.Abstract
Background
During development, the specification of individual cell types requires orchestrated shifts in the activity of thousands of genes, each following precise and coordinated trajectories. The ability of this process to succeed with remarkable reliability, despite its immense complexity, suggests that at least some underlying principles of development are fundamentally simple. Building on recent findings from epigenetic aging research, we hypothesize that linear trajectories in developing cells are influenced by concurrent oscillatory dynamics, which may help ensure synchrony and robustness.
Results
Supporting this model, we demonstrate an association between oscillatory and linear dynamics in cytosine modifications in mouse intestinal organoids, as well as in the transcriptomes of C. elegans . Furthermore, we show that transcriptomes of single cells exhibited developmental chrono-heterogeneity, enabling reconstruction of oscillatory cycles which also correlate with linear changes.
Conclusions
Oscillation-mediated linear dynamics may represent an evolutionary invention for encoding molecular time and orchestrating developmental processes.
