UC Irvine

Early embryonic cell fates are specified through coordinated integration of transcription factor activities and epigenetic states of the genome. Foxh1 is a key maternal transcription factor controlling the mesendodermal gene regulatory program. Proteomic interactome analyses using FOXH1 as a bait in mouse embryonic stem cells revealed that FOXH1 interacts with PRC2 subunits and HDAC1. Foxh1 physically interacts with Hdac1, and confers transcriptional repression of mesendodermal genes in Xenopus ectoderm. Our findings reveal a central role of Foxh1 in coordinating the chromatin states of the Xenopus embryonic genome.