Reviewer #3 (Public Review):
My understanding of the main claims of the paper, and how they are justified by the data are discussed below:<br /> Overall, loss of PRC2 function in the developing oocyte and early embryo causes:
1) Growth restriction from at least the blastocyst stage with low cell counts and midgestational developmental delay.
Strengths:
• Live embryo imaging added an important dimension to this study. The authors were able to confirm an unquantified finding from a previous lab (reduced time to 2-cell stage in oocyte-deletion Eed offspring, Inoue 2018, PMID: 30463900) as well as identify developmental delay and mortality at the blastocyst-hatching transition.<br /> • For the weight and morphological analysis the authors are careful to provide isogenic controls for most of the experiments presented. This means that any phenotypes can be attributed to the oocyte genotype rather than any confounding effects of maternal or paternal genotype.<br /> • Overall, there is good evidence that oocyte deletion of Eed results in early embryonic growth restriction, consistent with previous observations (Inoue 2018, PMID: 30463900).
Weaknesses:
Gaps in the reporting of specific features of the methodology make it difficult to interpret/understand some of the results.
2) Placental hyperplasia with disproportionate overgrowth of the junctional trophoblast especially the glycogen trophoblast (GlyT) cells.
Strengths:
• The authors provide a comprehensive description of how placental and embryo weight is affected by the oocyte-Eed deletion through mid-to-late gestation development. The case for placentomegaly is clear.<br /> Weaknesses:<br /> • The placental efficiency data presented in Figure 3G-I is incorrect. Placental efficiency is calculated as embryo mass/placental mass, and it increases over the late gestation period. For e14.5 for example (Fig3G), WT-wt embryo mass = ~0.3g, placenta mass = 0.11g (from Fig 3D) = placental efficiency 2.7; HET-hom = 0.25/0.12 = 2.1. The paper gives values: WT-wt 0.5, HET-hom 0.7. Have the authors perhaps divided placenta weight by embryo mass? This would explain why the E17.5 efficiencies are so low (WT-wt 0.11 rather than a more usual figure of 8.88. If this is the case then the authors' conclusion that placental efficiency is improved by oocyte deletion of Eed is wrong - in fact, placental efficiency is severely compromised.<br /> • The authors have performed cell type counting on histological sections obtained from placentas to discover which cells are contributing to the placentomegaly. This data is presented as %cell type area in the main figure, though the untransformed cross-sectional area for each cell type is shown in the supplementary data. This presentation of the data, as well as the description of it, is misleading because, while it emphasises the proportional increase in the endocrine compartment of the placenta it downplays the fact that the exchange area of the mutant placentas is vastly expanded. This is important for two reasons. Firstly, the whole placenta is increased in size suggesting that the mechanism is not placental lineage-specific and instead acting on the whole organ. Secondly in relation to embryonic growth, generally speaking, genetic manipulations that modify labyrinthine volume tend to have a positive correlation with fetal mass whereas the relationship between junctional zone volume and embryonic mass is more complex (discussed in Watson PMID: 15888575, for example). The authors should reconsider how they present this data in light of the previous point.<br /> • Again, some of the methods are not clearly reported making interpretation difficult - especially how they have estimated their GlyT number.
3) Perinatal embryonic/pup overgrowth.
Strengths:
• The overgrowth exhibited by the oocyte-Eed-deleted pups is striking and confirms the previous work by this group (Prokopuk, 2018). This is an important finding, especially in the context of understanding how PRC2-group gene mutations in humans cause overgrowth syndromes. It is also intriguing because it indicates that genetic/environmental insults in the mother that affect her gamete development can have long-term consequences on offspring physiology.
Weaknesses:
• Is the overgrowth intrauterine or is it caused by the increase in gestation length? The way the data is reported makes it impossible to work this out. The authors show that gestation time is consistently lengthened for mothers incubating oocyte-Eed-deleted pups by 1-2 days. In the supplementary material, the mutant embryos are not larger than WT at e19.5, the usual day of birth. Postnatal data is presented as day post-parturition. It would probably be clearer to present the embryonic and postnatal data as days post coitum. In this way, it will be obvious in which period the growth enhancement is taking place. This is information really important to determine whether the increased growth of the mutants is due to a direct effect of the intrauterine environment, or perhaps a more persistent hormonal change in the mother that can continue to promote growth beyond the gestation period.
4) "fetal growth restriction followed by placental hyperplasia, .. drives catch-up growth that ultimately results in perinatal offspring overgrowth".
Here the authors try to link their observations, suggesting that i) the increased perinatal growth rate is a consequence of placentomegaly, and ii) the placentomegaly/increased fetal growth is an adaptive consequence of the early growth restriction. This is an interesting idea and suggests that there is a degree of developmental plasticity that is operating to repair the early consequences of transient loss of Eed function.
Strengths:
• Discrepancies between earlier studies are reconciled. Here the authors show that in oocyte-Eed-deleted embryos growth is initially restricted and then the growth rate increases in late gestation with increased perinatal mass.
Weaknesses:
• Regarding the dependence of fetal growth increase on placental size increase, this link is far from clear since placental efficiency is in fact decreased in the mutants (see above).<br /> • "Catch-up growth" suggests that a higher growth rate is driven by an earlier growth restriction in order to restore homeostasis. There is no direct evidence for such a mechanism here. The loss of Eed expression in the oocyte and early embryo could have an independent impact on more than one phase of development. Firstly, there is growth restriction in the early phase of cell divisions. Potentially this could be due to depression of genes that restrain cell division on autosomes, or suppression of X-linked gene expression (as has been previously reported, Inoue, 2018 PMID: 30463900). The placentomegaly is explained by the misregulation of non-canonically imprinted genes, as the authors report (and in agreement with other studies, e.g. Inoue, 2020. PMID: 32358519).<br /> • Explaining the perinatal phase of growth enhancement is more difficult. I think it is unlikely to be due to placentomegaly. Multiple studies have shown that placentomegaly following somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) is caused by non-canonically imprinted genes, and can be rescued by reducing their expression dosage. However, SCNT causes placentomegaly with normal or reduced embryonic mass (for example -Xie 2022, PMID: 35196486), not growth enhancement. Moreover, since (to my knowledge) single loss of imprinting models of non-canonically imprinted genes do not exist, it is not possible to understand if their increased expression dosage can drive perinatal overgrowth, and if this is preceded by growth restriction and thus constitutes 'catch up growth'.

Screen capture from the movie