Abstract
Gastrulation is the highly coordinated process by which the early embryo breaks symmetry, establishes germ layers and a body plan, and sets the stage for organogenesis. As early mammalian development is challenging to study in vivo, stem cell-derived models have emerged as powerful surrogates, e.g. human and mouse gastruloids. However, although single cell RNA-seq (scRNA-seq) and high-resolution imaging have been extensively applied to characterize such in vitro embryo models, a paucity of measurements of protein dynamics and regulation leaves a major gap in our understanding. Here, we sought to address this by applying quantitative proteomics to human and mouse gastruloids at four key stages of their differentiation (naïve ESCs, primed ESCs, early gastruloids, late gastruloids). To the resulting data, we perform network analysis to map the dynamics of expression of macromolecular protein complexes and biochemical pathways, including identifying cooperative proteins that associate with them. With matched RNA-seq and phosphosite data from these same stages, we investigate pathway-, stage- and species-specific aspects of translational and post-translational regulation, e.g. finding peri-gastrulation stages of human and mice to be discordant with respect to the mitochondrial transcriptome vs. proteome, and nominating novel kinase-substrate relationships based on phosphosite dynamics. Finally, we leverage correlated dynamics to identify conserved protein networks centered around congenital disease genes. Altogether, our data (https://gastruloid.brotmanbaty.org/) and analyses showcase the potential of intersecting in vitro embryo models and proteomics to advance our understanding of early mammalian development in ways not possible through transcriptomics alone.