Regulatory sequence | EPFL Graph Search

A regulatory sequence is a segment of a nucleic acid molecule which is capable of increasing or decreasing the expression of specific genes within an organism. Regulation of gene expression is an essential feature of all living organisms and viruses. Description In DNA, regulation of gene expression normally happens at the level of RNA biosynthesis (transcription). It is accomplished through the sequence-specific binding of proteins (transcription factors) that activate or inhibit transcription. Transcription factors may act as activators, repressors, or both. Repressors often act by preventing RNA polymerase from forming a productive complex with the transcriptional initiation region (promoter), while activators facilitate formation of a productive complex. Furthermore, DNA motifs have been shown to be predictive of epigenomic modifications, suggesting that transcription factors play a role in regulating the epigenome. In RNA, regulation may occur at the level of prote

Developement of a gateway compatible system for speciﬁc DNA integration in mouse embryonic stem cells and evaluation of the effect of nucleosome positioning on gene expression

Julien Bryois

An emerging model views gene regulation as a competition for regulatory sequences between transcription factors and nucleosomes at thermodynamic equilibrium. A computational model of the DNA affinity of nucleosomes was recently developed allowing to predict the nucleosome occupancy of DNA sequences. The aim of this project was to investigate the effect of different predicted nucleosome occupancies of an important transcription factor binding site on mammalian gene expression. To this end, a two site and three site gateway compatible system allowing integration of DNA at a speciﬁc locus of two mouse embryonic stem cell lines was developed. An important POU5F1 (previously known as OCT4)/SOX2 binding site located in the Nanog promoter was chosen to be the transcription factor binding site of interest as it was shown to play a major role for Nanog expression. A 2kb sequence from the Nanog proximal promoter (-1585 to +415) was cloned upstream of two different minimal promoters and a GFP reporter using three site gateway cloning. These constructs were integrated in both cell lines and expressed low to medium levels of GFP. Next, several variants of a 1kb sequence from the Nanog promoter (-933 to +53), previously shown to be functional, were constructed. 35bp surrounding the POU5F1/SOX2 binding site were altered resulting in differential predicted nucleosome occupancy of the binding site. These promoters were linked to GFP with or without the addition of a kozak consensus sequence and a SV40 polyadenylation signal. Surprisingly, all these variants showed low GFP expression after transfection. This was not caused by biases introduced by the gateway system as a gateway construct containing the CMV promoter linked to GFP was shown to be functional. Furthermore, direct cloning of the 1kb Nanog promoter in a GFP expressing vector without gateway showed similar GFP expression as gateway cloning. Results indicate that both 2kb and 1kb Nanog promoters express GFP at low levels and that the constructs produced may be useful to measure differences in GFP expression using ﬂow cytometry

2010

Class I histone deacetylases (HDAC1-3) are histone lysine delactylases

Alexander Lund Nielsen, Di Zhang

Lysine L-lactylation [K(L-la)] is a newly discovered histone mark stimulated under conditions of high glycolysis, such as the Warburg effect. K(L-la) is associated with functions that are different from the widely studied histone acetylation. While K(L-la) can be introduced by the acetyltransferase p300, histone delactylases enzymes remained unknown. Here, we report the systematic evaluation of zinc- and nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide-dependent histone deacetylases (HDACs) for their ability to cleave epsilon-N-L-lactyllysine marks. Our screens identified HDAC1-3 and SIRT1-3 as delactylases in vitro. HDAC1-3 show robust activity toward not only K(L-la) but also K(D-la) and diverse short-chain acyl modifications. We further confirmed the de-L-lactylase activity of HDACs 1 and 3 in cells. Together, these data suggest that histone lactylation is installed and removed by regulatory enzymes as opposed to spontaneous chemical reactivity. Our results therefore represent an important step toward full characterization of this pathway's regulatory elements.

2022

Development and application of experimental tools to elucidate the gene regulatory network underlying adipogenesis

Carine Delattre-Gubelmann

Excess fat mass in obese individuals, which is characterized by an increase of white adipocyte cell size and number, significantly raises the risk of developing metabolic syndrome symptoms as well as cancer. A detailed understanding of the transcriptional mechanisms mediating white adipocyte differentiation (i.e., adipogenesis) is required to counteract the growing obesity epidemics. In this thesis, we have implemented two combinatory approaches to detect new protein-DNA interactions in the mouse, one of which targets the adipogenic gene regulatory network (GRN) that underlies the white adipocyte differentiation process. As a first approach to shed light on GRNs, we have developed and validated a powerful approach that combines a high-throughput yeast one-hybrid-based (Y1H) system to detect transcription factors (TFs)-DNA element interactions, together with a novel microfluidics-based technique, enabling the identification and characterization of individual binding sites for detected TFs within the respective regulatory sequences at unprecedented throughput and resolution. Using well-described regulatory elements as well as an uncharacterized enhancer which can play also a role in adipogenesis, we show that our approach in a first phase uncovers many known as well as novel TF-DNA interactions, of which a large proportion were independently validated. In addition, we further demonstrate how our approach can be used in a second phase to characterize detected interactions by enabling the generation of a relative DNA occupancy landscape over the length of the respective DNA element. Furthermore, we provide evidence that this system enables the detection of novel interactions that may have in vivo relevance. Given the strict requirements for direct and well-characterized protein-DNA interaction data to generate and model gene regulatory networks, the presented two-tiered approach should be of great value to enhance our understanding of the regulatory principles underlying mouse gene expression. To identify transcription factors involved in white adipocyte differentiation, we overexpressed TFs in preadipocytes and quantified their effect on differentiation. To this end, we have created a mouse open-reading frame resource consisting of more than 750 fully sequence-verified TF clones. We transferred these TF clones to a Tet-On lentiviral vector and used them to infect white preadipocytes. Based on microscopy-assisted quantification of lipids after induction of differentiation, we identified putatively novel TF candidates that strongly enhanced differentiation based on the increased lipid accumulation, indicating a potential role in adipogenesis. Gene expression and ChIP-seq experiments have been performed for the three top candidates (ZEB1, ZFP30 and ZFP277) to further study their function within the adipogenic regulatory network. To assess whether the effect of these TFs on adipogenesis could be reproduced in vivo, murine adipose stromal-vascular fraction containing adipocyte precursor cells were implanted into mice fed a high-fat diet, after each of the three TF candidates were knockdown or overexpressed in these cells. This experiment and the RNA-seq analyses are currently being processed while this thesis is being written. Furthermore, due to the absence of quantitative real-time PCR (qPCR) primer designing tools that would allow for gene-specific expression profiling in a high-throughput fashion, we design a user-friendly platform: GETPrime. This platform uniquely combines and automates several features critical to optimal qPCR primer design for all annotated Homo sapiens, Mus musculus, Caenorhabditis elegans, Drosophila melanogaster and Danio rerio genes in the Ensembl database. GETPrime primers have been extensively validated experimentally, demonstrating their high quality as well as high transcript specificity in complex samples.

EPFL2013