Histone modifications in zebrafish development

Reversible covalent histone modifications are known to influence spatiotemporal patterns of gene transcription during development. Here I review recent advances in the development and use of methods to analyze the distribution and functions of histone modifications in zebrafish chromatin. I discuss the roles of dynamic histone modification patterns at the promoters and enhancers of genes during the process of zygotic gene activation at blastula stages and the interplay between the molecular machinery responsible for histone modifications, chromatin remodeling and DNA methylation. Interactions are also described between developmentally regulated enhancer sequences and modified histones. A detailed method for chromatin immunoprecipitation using antibodies is provided, and I describe the use of high-throughput whole genome sequencing technology to generate DNA sequence data from chromatin immunoprecipitates. I also discuss computational approaches to integrating DNA sequence data obtained from chromatin immunoprecipitates with annotated reference genome sequences, transcriptome and methylome sequence data, transcription factor binding motif databases, and gene ontologies and describe the types of software tools currently available for visualizing the results.