scholarly journals Genome-wide Ultrabithorax binding analysis reveals highly targeted genomic loci at developmental regulators and a potential connection to Polycomb-mediated regulation

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daria Shlyueva ◽  
Antonio C.A. Meireles-Filho ◽  
Michaela Pagani ◽  
Alexander Stark

Hox homeodomain transcription factors are key regulators of animal development. They specify the identity of segments along the anterior-posterior body axis in metazoans by controlling the expression of diverse downstream targets, including transcription factors and signaling pathway components. The Drosophila melanogaster Hox factor Ultrabithorax (Ubx) directs the development of thoracic and abdominal segments and appendages, and loss of Ubx function can lead for example to the transformation of third thoracic segment appendages (e.g. halters) into second thoracic segment appendages (e.g. wings), resulting in a characteristic four-wing phenotype. Here we present a Drosophila melanogaster strain with a V5-epitope tagged Ubx allele, which we employed to obtain a high quality genome-wide map of Ubx binding sites using ChIP-seq. We confirm the sensitivity of the V5 ChIP-seq by recovering 7/8 of well-studied Ubx-dependent cis-regulatory regions. Moreover, we show that Ubx binding is predictive of enhancer activity as suggested by comparison with a genome-scale resource of in vivo tested enhancer candidates. We observed densely clustered Ubx binding sites at 12 extended genomic loci that included ANTP-C, BX-C, Polycomb complex genes, and other regulators and the clustered binding sites were frequently active enhancers. Furthermore, Ubx binding was detected at known Polycomb response elements (PREs) and was associated with significant enrichments of Pc and Pho ChIP signals in contrast to binding sites of other developmental TFs. Together, our results show that Ubx targets developmental regulators via strongly clustered binding sites and allow us to hypothesize that regulation by Ubx might involve Polycomb group proteins to maintain specific regulatory states in cooperative or mutually exclusive fashion, an attractive model that combines two groups of proteins with prominent gene regulatory roles during animal development.

Blood ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 119 (2) ◽  
pp. 388-398 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yongsheng Huang ◽  
Kajal Sitwala ◽  
Joel Bronstein ◽  
Daniel Sanders ◽  
Monisha Dandekar ◽  
...  

The clustered homeobox proteins play crucial roles in development, hematopoiesis, and leukemia, yet the targets they regulate and their mechanisms of action are poorly understood. Here, we identified the binding sites for Hoxa9 and the Hox cofactor Meis1 on a genome-wide level and profiled their associated epigenetic modifications and transcriptional targets. Hoxa9 and the Hox cofactor Meis1 cobind at hundreds of highly evolutionarily conserved sites, most of which are distant from transcription start sites. These sites show high levels of histone H3K4 monomethylation and CBP/P300 binding characteristic of enhancers. Furthermore, a subset of these sites shows enhancer activity in transient transfection assays. Many Hoxa9 and Meis1 binding sites are also bound by PU.1 and other lineage-restricted transcription factors previously implicated in establishment of myeloid enhancers. Conditional Hoxa9 activation is associated with CBP/P300 recruitment, histone acetylation, and transcriptional activation of a network of proto-oncogenes, including Erg, Flt3, Lmo2, Myb, and Sox4. Collectively, this work suggests that Hoxa9 regulates transcription by interacting with enhancers of genes important for hematopoiesis and leukemia.


PLoS Genetics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (11) ◽  
pp. e1009907
Author(s):  
Mads Bengtsen ◽  
Ivan Myhre Winje ◽  
Einar Eftestøl ◽  
Johannes Landskron ◽  
Chengyi Sun ◽  
...  

Muscle cells have different phenotypes adapted to different usage, and can be grossly divided into fast/glycolytic and slow/oxidative types. While most muscles contain a mixture of such fiber types, we aimed at providing a genome-wide analysis of the epigenetic landscape by ChIP-Seq in two muscle extremes, the fast/glycolytic extensor digitorum longus (EDL) and slow/oxidative soleus muscles. Muscle is a heterogeneous tissue where up to 60% of the nuclei can be of a different origin. Since cellular homogeneity is critical in epigenome-wide association studies we developed a new method for purifying skeletal muscle nuclei from whole tissue, based on the nuclear envelope protein Pericentriolar material 1 (PCM1) being a specific marker for myonuclei. Using antibody labelling and a magnetic-assisted sorting approach, we were able to sort out myonuclei with 95% purity in muscles from mice, rats and humans. The sorting eliminated influence from the other cell types in the tissue and improved the myo-specific signal. A genome-wide comparison of the epigenetic landscape in EDL and soleus reflected the differences in the functional properties of the two muscles, and revealed distinct regulatory programs involving distal enhancers, including a glycolytic super-enhancer in the EDL. The two muscles were also regulated by different sets of transcription factors; e.g. in soleus, binding sites for MEF2C, NFATC2 and PPARA were enriched, while in EDL MYOD1 and SIX1 binding sites were found to be overrepresented. In addition, more novel transcription factors for muscle regulation such as members of the MAF family, ZFX and ZBTB14 were identified.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hamutal Arbel ◽  
William W. Fisher ◽  
Ann S. Hammonds ◽  
Kenneth H. Wan ◽  
Soo Park ◽  
...  

AbstractIdentifying functional enhancers elements in metazoan systems is a major challenge. For example, large-scale validation of enhancers predicted by ENCODE reveal false positive rates of at least 70%. Here we use the pregrastrula patterning network of Drosophila melanogaster to demonstrate that loss in accuracy in held out data results from heterogeneity of functional signatures in enhancer elements. We show that two classes of enhancer are active during early Drosophila embryogenesis and that by focusing on a single, relatively homogeneous class of elements, over 98% prediction accuracy can be achieved in a balanced, completely held-out test set. The class of well predicted elements is composed predominantly of enhancers driving multi-stage, segmentation patterns, which we designate segmentation driving enhancers (SDE). Prediction is driven by the DNA occupancy of early developmental transcription factors, with almost no additional power derived from histone modifications. We further show that improved accuracy is not a property of a particular prediction method: after conditioning on the SDE set, naïve Bayes and logistic regression perform as well as more sophisticated tools. Applying this method to a genome-wide scan, we predict 1,640 SDEs that cover 1.6% of the genome, 916 of which are novel. An analysis of 32 novel SDEs using wholemount embryonic imaging of stably integrated reporter constructs chosen throughout our prediction rank-list showed >90% drove expression patterns. We achieved 86.7% precision on a genome-wide scan, with an estimated recall of at least 98%, indicating high accuracy and completeness in annotating this class of functional elements.Significance StatementWe demonstrate a high accuracy method for predicting enhancers genome wide with > 85% precision as validated by transgenic reporter assays in Drosophila embryos. This is the first time such accuracy has been achieved in a metazoan system, allowing us to predict with high-confidence 1640 enhancers, 916 of which are novel. The predicted enhancers are demarcated by heterogeneous collections of epigenetic marks; many strong enhancers are free from classical indicators of activity, including H3K27ac, but are bound by key transcription factors. H3K27ac, often used as a one-dimensional predictor of enhancer activity, is an uninformative parameter in our data.


2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin P. Berman ◽  
Yaping Liu ◽  
Theresa K. Kelly

Nucleosome organization and DNA methylation are two epigenetic mechanisms that are important for proper control of mammalian transcription. Numerous lines of evidence suggest an interaction between these two mechanisms, but the nature of this interaction in vivo remains elusive. Whole-genome DNA methylation sequencing studies have shown that human methylation levels are periodic at intervals of approximately 190 bp, suggesting a genome-wide relationship between the two marks. A recent report (Chodavarapu et al., 2010) attributed this to higher methylation levels of DNA within nucleosomes. Here, we propose an alternate explanation for these nucleosomal periodicities. By examining methylation patterns in published datasets, we find that genome-wide methylation levels are highest within the linker regions that occur between nucleosomes in multi-nucleosome arrays. This effect is most prominent within long-range Partially Methylated Domains (PMDs) and the strongly positioned nucleosomes that flank CTCF binding sites. The CTCF-flanking nucleosomes retain positioning even in regions completely devoid of CpG dinucleotides, suggesting that DNA methylation is not required for proper positioning. We propose that DNA methylation is inhibited by histone proteins at CTCF and other unknown classes of nucleosomes within PMDs.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lei Ren ◽  
Haixia Wu ◽  
Tingting Zhang ◽  
Xinyu Ge ◽  
Tianlong Wang ◽  
...  

Plant-specific TCP transcription factors play vital roles in the controlling of growth, development, and the stress response processes. Extensive researches have been carried out in numerous species, however, there hasn’t been any information available about TCP genes in sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas L.). In this study, a genome-wide analysis of TCP genes was carried out to explore the evolution and function in sweet potato. Altogether, 18 IbTCPs were identified and cloned. The expression profiles of the IbTCPs differed dramatically in different organs or different stages of leaf development. Furthermore, four CIN-clade IbTCP genes contained miR319-binding sites. Blocking IbmiR319 significantly increased the expression level of IbTCP11/17 and resulted in a decreased photosynthetic rate due to the change in leaf submicroscopic structure, indicating the significance of IbmiR319-targeted IbTCPs in leaf anatomical morphology. A systematic analyzation on the characterization of the IbTCPs together with the primary functions in leaf anatomical morphology were conducted to afford a basis for further study of the IbmiR319/IbTCP module in association with leaf anatomical morphology in sweet potato.


2021 ◽  
Vol 49 (7) ◽  
pp. 3856-3875
Author(s):  
Marina Kulik ◽  
Melissa Bothe ◽  
Gözde Kibar ◽  
Alisa Fuchs ◽  
Stefanie Schöne ◽  
...  

Abstract The glucocorticoid (GR) and androgen (AR) receptors execute unique functions in vivo, yet have nearly identical DNA binding specificities. To identify mechanisms that facilitate functional diversification among these transcription factor paralogs, we studied them in an equivalent cellular context. Analysis of chromatin and sequence suggest that divergent binding, and corresponding gene regulation, are driven by different abilities of AR and GR to interact with relatively inaccessible chromatin. Divergent genomic binding patterns can also be the result of subtle differences in DNA binding preference between AR and GR. Furthermore, the sequence composition of large regions (>10 kb) surrounding selectively occupied binding sites differs significantly, indicating a role for the sequence environment in guiding AR and GR to distinct binding sites. The comparison of binding sites that are shared shows that the specificity paradox can also be resolved by differences in the events that occur downstream of receptor binding. Specifically, shared binding sites display receptor-specific enhancer activity, cofactor recruitment and changes in histone modifications. Genomic deletion of shared binding sites demonstrates their contribution to directing receptor-specific gene regulation. Together, these data suggest that differences in genomic occupancy as well as divergence in the events that occur downstream of receptor binding direct functional diversification among transcription factor paralogs.


Author(s):  
Xiaoping Huang ◽  
Hongyu Zhang ◽  
Qiang Wang ◽  
Rong Guo ◽  
Lingxia Wei ◽  
...  

Abstract Key message This study showed the systematic identification of long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) involving in flag leaf senescence of rice, providing the possible lncRNA-mRNA regulatory relationships and lncRNA-miRNA-mRNA ceRNA networks during leaf senescence. Abstract LncRNAs have been reported to play crucial roles in diverse biological processes. However, no systematic identification of lncRNAs associated with leaf senescence in plants has been studied. In this study, a genome-wide high throughput sequencing analysis was performed using rice flag leaves developing from normal to senescence. A total of 3953 lncRNAs and 38757 mRNAs were identified, of which 343 lncRNAs and 9412 mRNAs were differentially expressed. Through weighted gene co-expression network analysis (WGCNA), 22 continuously down-expressed lncRNAs targeting 812 co-expressed mRNAs and 48 continuously up-expressed lncRNAs targeting 1209 co-expressed mRNAs were considered to be significantly associated with flag leaf senescence. Gene Ontology results suggested that the senescence-associated lncRNAs targeted mRNAs involving in many biological processes, including transcription, hormone response, oxidation–reduction process and substance metabolism. Additionally, 43 senescence-associated lncRNAs were predicted to target 111 co-expressed transcription factors. Interestingly, 8 down-expressed lncRNAs and 29 up-expressed lncRNAs were found to separately target 12 and 20 well-studied senescence-associated genes (SAGs). Furthermore, analysis on the competing endogenous RNA (CeRNA) network revealed that 6 down-expressed lncRNAs possibly regulated 51 co-expressed mRNAs through 15 miRNAs, and 14 up-expressed lncRNAs possibly regulated 117 co-expressed mRNAs through 21 miRNAs. Importantly, by expression validation, a conserved miR164-NAC regulatory pathway was found to be possibly involved in leaf senescence, where lncRNA MSTRG.62092.1 may serve as a ceRNA binding with miR164a and miR164e to regulate three transcription factors. And two key lncRNAs MSTRG.31014.21 and MSTRG.31014.36 also could regulate the abscisic-acid biosynthetic gene BGIOSGA025169 (OsNCED4) and BGIOSGA016313 (NAC family) through osa-miR5809. The possible regulation networks of lncRNAs involving in leaf senescence were discussed, and several candidate lncRNAs were recommended for prior transgenic analysis. These findings will extend the understanding on the regulatory roles of lncRNAs in leaf senescence, and lay a foundation for functional research on candidate lncRNAs.


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