Extended Data Fig. 9: The methylation level or upstream important transcription factors of gene Tert.

To explore the mechanisms underlying the telomere shortening, we included single-cell multi-omics sequencing (transcriptome and epigenome) data of mouse early embryos with different developmental stages. The box plot displays the first and third quartiles (top and bottom of the boxes), the median (band inside the boxes), and the lowest and highest point within 1.5 times the interquartile range of the lower and higher quartile (whiskers). a, The expression level of Tert increased at the early blastocyst stage (8-cell stage vs. 32-cell stage, 28 vs. 53, two-sided Wilcoxon rank sum test, P = 1.71 × 10⁻²). b, We observed a decreasing methylation level of Tert from the late cleavage stage to the early blastocyst stage (8-cell stage vs. 32-cell stage, 28 vs. 53, two-sided Wilcoxon rank sum test, P = 4.79 × 10⁻¹²). c, Embryos with low methylation level (average methylation level < 0.5, n = 58) of Tert showed significantly increased Tert expression (two-sided Wilcoxon rank sum test, P = 4.60 × 10⁻²) (d) SCENIC was used to identify the regulators of Tert expression and potential regulators of Tert expression (that is, Hif1a and Srebf1) were identified.