Stella modulates transcriptional and endogenous retrovirus programs during maternal-to-zygotic transition Yun Huang1,7 , Jong Kyoung Kim2,6,7, Dang Vinh Do1, Caroline Lee1, Christopher A. Penfold1, Jan J. Zylicz1, John C. Marioni2,3,5, Jamie A. Hackett1,4,8, M. Azim Surani1,8 1 Wellcome Trust/Cancer Research UK Gurdon Institute, University of Cambridge, Tennis Court Road, Cambridge CB2 1QN, UK; Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience, University of Cambridge, Downing Street, Cambridge CB2 3DY, UK 2 European Molecular Biology Laboratory – European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI), Wellcome Trust Genome Campus, Cambridge CB10 1SD, UK 3 Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, Wellcome Trust Genome Campus, Cambridge CB10 1SA, UK 4 Present Address: European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) - Monterotondo, via Ramarini 32, 00015 Rome, Italy 5 Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 0RE, UK 6 Department of New Biology, DGIST, Daegu, 42988, Republic of Korea 7 Co-first authors 8 Co-corresponding authors
[email protected] [email protected] 1 1 Abstract 2 3 The maternal-to-zygotic transition (MZT) marks the period when the embryonic genome is 4 activated and acquires control of development. Maternally inherited factors play a key role in 5 this critical developmental process, which occurs at the 2-cell stage in mice. We investigated 6 the function of the maternally inherited factor Stella (encoded by Dppa3) using single- 7 cell/embryo approaches. We show that loss of maternal Stella results in widespread 8 transcriptional mis-regulation and a partial failure of MZT. Strikingly, activation of 9 endogenous retroviruses (ERVs) is significantly impaired in Stella maternal/zygotic knockout 10 embryos, which in turn leads to a failure to upregulate chimeric transcripts.