Antoine Peters’ office feels alive. Pots of green plants crowd the windowsill and shelves, perfectly at home among computers and books. “I like to be surrounded by beautiful things,” he says. “Science isn’t just numbers, it’s also a bit of art.”

At the FMI, Peters explores how biological information is transmitted not only through the genetic code but also through the chemical and structural cues that determine how that code is read. His team has revealed how information carried by eggs and sperms orchestrates the earliest steps of embryonic development, and what happens when that process goes awry.

Most recently, his group uncovered a mechanism that safeguards key genes from DNA methylation — a chemical mark that, when misplaced, can silence essential genes and prevent embryos from developing.

Peters’ fascination with living systems started long before he became a scientist. At 18, he began his studies at Wageningen University in the Netherlands, learning the fundamentals of physics, chemistry, mathematics and biology. During these years, he encountered epigenetics — the study of how traits are inherited through chemical and structural modifications to the genome.

“I was fascinated by how information is passed on between generations,” he says. That question now lies at the heart of his research.

The architecture of life
Every cell in the body carries the same DNA, yet cells differ in their identity and function. That flexibility comes from chromatin, the assembly of DNA and histone proteins that folds the genome into the cell’s nucleus. Some parts of the genome are tightly packaged and silent, while others remain open and accessible to the molecular machinery that switches genes on.

Peters’ team investigates how this packaging influences which genes are active in eggs, sperm, and early embryos. Using mouse models, his team removes specific chromatin components from developing gametes and observes how this affects fertilization and embryogenesis. These experiments revealed that the chromatin “flavors”— open or closed — inherited from each parent are essential for proper genome activation after fertilization.

[Watch this video that illustrates Peters' work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDQXmxEJgIg]

“When I started at the FMI, nobody really knew what types of chromatin existed in gametes,” he says. Over two decades, his group has identified different chromatin types and shown that disrupting chromatin structure can make chromosomes fragile, leading to developmental failure.

In recent years, Peters’ research has expanded to human fertility, particularly male infertility. His team developed a new method to measure how accessible the genome is in sperm cells from fertile and infertile men. The results showed differences between the two groups, suggesting that chromatin accessibility is a marker of reproductive capacity.

“If we can identify specific chromatin signatures in sperm that correlate with embryo viability, that could open the door to diagnostic or prognostic tools in the clinic,” he says.

Inheritance and fertility
The lab’s latest work focuses on methylation, an important chemical mark on DNA. Methylation typically silences genes by preventing regulatory regions from being accessed. But the decision of whether a region becomes methylated depends on chromatin.

The researchers discovered that in eggs, a chromatin-based mechanism safeguards regulatory regions from methylation. When this mechanism fails, methylation spreads to areas that should remain active. Although the eggs appear normal, the embryos cannot develop after fertilization or implant in the mother’s womb.

In mice, removing the enzymes responsible for DNA methylation in eggs rescued defects in embryonic development, the researchers found. The findings, which appeared in print in Developmental Cell in December, suggest that chromatin states inherited from the egg determine which genes the embryo can activate after fertilization.

Beyond early development, Peters’ team is beginning to explore how aberrant methylation might affect placental formation and later stages of embryogenesis. “In the long run, this knowledge might help understand certain forms of infertility,” he says.