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10 July 2021 Germ cells: ENCODE's forgotten cell type
John R. McCarrey, Keren Cheng
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Abstract

More than a decade ago, the ENCODE and NIH Epigenomics Roadmap consortia organized large multilaboratory efforts to profile the epigenomes of >110 different mammalian somatic cell types. This generated valuable publicly accessible datasets that are being mined to reveal genome-wide patterns of a variety of different epigenetic parameters. This consortia approach facilitated the powerful and comprehensive multiparametric integrative analysis of the epigenomes in each cell type. However, no germ cell types were included among the cell types characterized by either of these consortia. Thus, comprehensive epigenetic profiling data are not generally available for the most evolutionarily important cells, male and female germ cells. We discuss the need for reproductive biologists to generate similar multiparametric epigenomic profiling datasets for both male and female germ cells at different developmental stages and summarize our recent effort to derive such data for mammalian spermatogonial stem cells and progenitor spermatogonia.

Summary sentence

The ENCODE and NIH Epigenome Roadmap consortia have generated valuable datasets profiling epigenomes of >110 different mammalian somatic cell types, but none of these have included profiles of even a single germ cell type.

© The Author(s) 2021. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Society for the Study of Reproduction. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com
John R. McCarrey and Keren Cheng "Germ cells: ENCODE's forgotten cell type," Biology of Reproduction 105(3), 761-766, (10 July 2021). https://doi.org/10.1093/biolre/ioab135
Received: 4 March 2021; Accepted: 6 July 2021; Published: 10 July 2021
KEYWORDS
cell fate
chromatin
epigenetic profiling
progenitor spermatogonia
spermatogonial stem cells
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