Qing Sun | PubMed Health

PubMed2026

Age-associated chromatin repression of Hippo-Yap signaling drives oogonial stem cell decline in chicken.

Oogonial stem cells (OSCs) are a type of reproductive germline stem cell present in the ovaries of adult animals after birth. They have been proposed to contribute to follicle renewal and could be associated with reproductive longevity, yet the molecular mechanism contribute to OSC malfunction during aging in chicken remain unclear. Here, we show that OSC number and proliferative capacity decline significantly from pre-laying to late-laying stages, accompanied by increased follicular atresia. RNA-seq analysis revealed a global reduction in transcriptional activity in aged OSCs. ChIP-seq demonstrated elevated H3K27me3 deposition, particularly at promoter regions, which correlated with repression of proliferation-related genes in the Hippo pathway including YAP1 and TEAD1. Pharmacological inhibition of H3K27me3 reduced repressive chromatin marks, restored Hippo pathway gene expression, and significantly enhanced OSC proliferation. Conversely, YAP1 knockdown attenuated proliferation-associated gene expression. These findings indicate that age-dependent H3K27me3 accumulation suppresses OSC proliferation through epigenetic repression of the Hippo-YAP axis, providing mechanistic insight into ovarian aging and a potential strategy to extend the laying cycle in poultry.

Animals↗

PubMed2025

Roles of microbial interactions in determining the establishment and function of synthetic consortium inoculants for soil applications.

Synthetic microbial consortium inoculants are emerging nature-based solutions for promoting sustainable agriculture and mitigating environmental challenges. However, despite promising results in simpler lab-scale trials, many inoculants fail to establish or perform satisfactorily in field conditions. One most critical yet least understood factor influencing inoculant effectiveness is the complex microbial interactions, both within consortium inoculants ("within-community" interactions) and between consortium inoculants and native soil communities ("cross-community" interactions). Here, we first discuss major negative and positive "within-community" interactions and highlight the importance to design consortium inoculants with positive interactions for improved stability and functionality. We then examine the bidirectional "cross-community" interactions once introducing consortium inoculants to soils. Soil native communities often create strong resistance to the invasion of inoculants. We discuss major drivers controlling the invasibility of native communities and various strategies increasing the invasiveness of consortium inoculants. We then discuss how consortium inoculants can reshape native communities, with implications for long-term ecosystem resilience and functioning. We propose future research efforts including advancing strategies for harnessing natural species from relatively untapped soil reservoirs and using high-throughput interaction profiling with multi-omics and computational tools to build compatible synthetic consortia with desirable functions; leveraging positive interactions and prebiotics to facilitate inoculant establishment; and assessing fully soil functional resilience over longer terms, including recognizing the importance of rare keystone taxa. By integrating with ecological theory, this review provides a comprehensive insight into microbial interactions to advance the design, application, and monitoring of synthetic consortium inoculants for enhancing soil health and ecosystem sustainability.

establishment↗