scholarly journals Long first exons and epigenetic marks distinguish conserved pachytene piRNA clusters from other mammalian genes

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tianxiong Yu ◽  
Kaili Fan ◽  
Deniz M. Özata ◽  
Gen Zhang ◽  
Yu Fu ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Rna Polymerase Ii ◽  
Nuclear Export ◽  
Transcriptional Elongation ◽  
Male Germline ◽  
Evolutionarily Conserved ◽  
Germline Expression ◽  
Mammalian Genes ◽  
Multiple Species ◽  
Cg Dinucleotides ◽  
Exon 10

AbstractIn the male germ cells of placental mammals, 26–30-nt-long PIWI-interacting RNAs (piRNAs) emerge when spermatocytes enter the pachytene phase of meiosis. In mice, pachytene piRNAs derive from ~100 discrete autosomal loci that produce canonical RNA polymerase II transcripts. These piRNA clusters bear 5′ caps and 3′ poly(A) tails, and often contain introns that are removed before nuclear export and processing into piRNAs. What marks pachytene piRNA clusters to produce piRNAs, and what confines their expression to the germline? We report that an unusually long first exon (≥ 10 kb) or a long, unspliced transcript correlates with germline-specific transcription and piRNA production. Our integrative analysis of transcriptome, piRNA, and epigenome datasets across multiple species reveals that a long first exon is an evolutionarily conserved feature of pachytene piRNA clusters. Furthermore, a highly methylated promoter, often containing a low or intermediate level of CG dinucleotides, correlates with germline expression and somatic silencing of pachytene piRNA clusters. Pachytene piRNA precursor transcripts bind THOC1 and THOC2, THO complex subunits known to promote transcriptional elongation and mRNA nuclear export. Together, these features may explain why the major sources of pachytene piRNA clusters specifically generate these unique small RNAs in the male germline of placental mammals.

scholarly journals Fine-Tuning of FACT by the Ubiquitin Proteasome System in Regulation of Transcriptional Elongation

2016 ◽  
Vol 36 (11) ◽  
pp. 1691-1703 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rwik Sen ◽  
Jannatul Ferdoush ◽  
Amala Kaja ◽  
Sukesh R. Bhaumik
Keyword(s):  
Rna Polymerase Ii ◽  
Ubiquitin Proteasome System ◽  
Optimal Level ◽  
26S Proteasome ◽  
Fine Tuning ◽  
Transcriptional Elongation ◽  
Cellular Functions ◽  
Evolutionarily Conserved ◽  
Ubiquitin Proteasome ◽  
First Time

FACT (facilitateschromatintranscription), an evolutionarily conserved histone chaperone involved in transcription and other DNA transactions, is upregulated in cancers, and its downregulation is associated with cellular death. However, it is not clearly understood how FACT is fine-tuned for normal cellular functions. Here, we show that the FACT subunit Spt16 is ubiquitylated by San1 (an E3 ubiquitin ligase) and degraded by the 26S proteasome. Enhanced abundance of Spt16 in the absence of San1 impairs transcriptional elongation. Likewise, decreased abundance of Spt16 also reduces transcription. Thus, an optimal level of Spt16 is required for efficient transcriptional elongation, which is maintained by San1 via ubiquitylation and proteasomal degradation. Consistently, San1 associates with the coding sequences of active genes to regulate Spt16's abundance. Further, we found that enhanced abundance of Spt16 in the absence of San1 impairs chromatin reassembly at the coding sequence, similarly to the results seen following inactivation of Spt16. Efficient chromatin reassembly enhances the fidelity of transcriptional elongation. Taken together, our results demonstrate for the first time a fine-tuning of FACT by a ubiquitin proteasome system in promoting chromatin reassembly in the wake of elongating RNA polymerase II and transcriptional elongation, thus revealing novel regulatory mechanisms of gene expression.

scholarly journals Evidence for Multiple Mediator Complexes in Yeast Independently Recruited by Activated Heat Shock Factor

2016 ◽  
Vol 36 (14) ◽  
pp. 1943-1960 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jayamani Anandhakumar ◽  
Yara W. Moustafa ◽  
Surabhi Chowdhary ◽  
Amoldeep S. Kainth ◽  
David S. Gross
Keyword(s):  
Heat Shock ◽  
Rna Polymerase Ii ◽  
Target Genes ◽  
Heat Shock Factor ◽  
Heat Shock Factor 1 ◽  
Dynamic Complexity ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Evolutionarily Conserved ◽  
Multiple Species

Mediator is an evolutionarily conserved coactivator complex essential for RNA polymerase II transcription. Although it has been generally assumed that inSaccharomyces cerevisiae, Mediator is a stable trimodular complex, its structural statein vivoremains unclear. Using the “anchor away” (AA) technique to conditionally deplete select subunits within Mediator and its reversibly associated Cdk8 kinase module (CKM), we provide evidence that Mediator's tail module is highly dynamic and that a subcomplex consisting of Med2, Med3, and Med15 can be independently recruited to the regulatory regions of heat shock factor 1 (Hsf1)-activated genes. Fluorescence microscopy of a scaffold subunit (Med14)-anchored strain confirmed parallel cytoplasmic sequestration of core subunits located outside the tail triad. In addition, and contrary to current models, we provide evidence that Hsf1 can recruit the CKM independently of core Mediator and that core Mediator has a role in regulating postinitiation events. Collectively, our results suggest that yeast Mediator is not monolithic but potentially has a dynamic complexity heretofore unappreciated. Multiple species, including CKM-Mediator, the 21-subunit core complex, the Med2-Med3-Med15 tail triad, and the four-subunit CKM, can be independently recruited by activated Hsf1 to its target genes in AA strains.

scholarly journals DIPG-03. THERAPEUTIC TARGETING OF TRANSCRIPTIONAL ELONGATION IN DIFFUSE INTRINSIC PONTINE GLIOMA

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (Supplement_3) ◽  
pp. iii287-iii287
Author(s):  
Hiroaki Katagi ◽  
Nozomu Takata ◽  
Yuki Aoi ◽  
Yongzhan Zhang ◽  
Emily J Rendleman ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Rna Polymerase Ii ◽  
Transcription Elongation ◽  
Xenograft Model ◽  
Diffuse Intrinsic Pontine Glioma ◽  
Transcriptional Elongation ◽  
Pontine Glioma ◽  
Elongation Complex ◽  
Pol Ii ◽  
Repair Genes ◽  
Novel Therapeutic

Abstract Diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG) is highly aggressive brain stem tumor and needed to develop novel therapeutic agents for the treatment. The super elongation complex (SEC) is essential for transcription elongation through release of RNA polymerase II (Pol II). We found that AFF4, a scaffold protein of the SEC, is required for the growth of H3K27M-mutant DIPG cells. In addition, the small molecule SEC inhibitor, KL-1, increased promoter-proximal pausing of Pol II, and reduced transcription elongation, resulting in down-regulate cell cycle, transcription and DNA repair genes. KL-1 treatment decreased cell growth and increased apoptosis in H3K27M-mutant DIPG cells, and prolonged animal survival in our human H3K27M-mutant DIPG xenograft model. Our results demonstrate that the SEC disruption by KL-1 is a novel therapeutic strategy for H3K27M-mutant DIPG.

scholarly journals Regulation of P-TEFb Elongation Complex Activity by CDK9 Acetylation

2007 ◽  
Vol 27 (13) ◽  
pp. 4641-4651 ◽  
Author(s):  
Junjiang Fu ◽  
Ho-Geun Yoon ◽  
Jun Qin ◽  
Jiemin Wong
Keyword(s):  
Rna Polymerase Ii ◽  
Elongation Factor ◽  
Transcriptional Elongation ◽  
Elongation Complex ◽  
Complex Activity ◽  
Interacting Protein ◽  
Pol Ii ◽  
Carboxy Terminal

ABSTRACT P-TEFb, comprised of CDK9 and a cyclin T subunit, is a global transcriptional elongation factor important for most RNA polymerase II (pol II) transcription. P-TEFb facilitates transcription elongation in part by phosphorylating Ser2 of the heptapeptide repeat of the carboxy-terminal domain (CTD) of the largest subunit of pol II. Previous studies have shown that P-TEFb is subjected to negative regulation by forming an inactive complex with 7SK small RNA and HEXIM1. In an effort to investigate the molecular mechanism by which corepressor N-CoR mediates transcription repression, we identified HEXIM1 as an N-CoR-interacting protein. This finding led us to test whether the P-TEFb complex is regulated by acetylation. We demonstrate that CDK9 is an acetylated protein in cells and can be acetylated by p300 in vitro. Through both in vitro and in vivo assays, we identified lysine 44 of CDK9 as a major acetylation site. We present evidence that CDK9 is regulated by N-CoR and its associated HDAC3 and that acetylation of CDK9 affects its ability to phosphorylate the CTD of pol II. These results suggest that acetylation of CDK9 is an important posttranslational modification that is involved in regulating P-TEFb transcriptional elongation function.

Identification of rpo30, a vaccinia virus RNA polymerase gene with structural similarity to a eucaryotic transcription elongation factor

1990 ◽  
Vol 10 (10) ◽  
pp. 5433-5441
Author(s):  
B Y Ahn ◽  
P D Gershon ◽  
E V Jones ◽  
B Moss
Keyword(s):  
Rna Polymerase ◽  
Vaccinia Virus ◽  
Rna Polymerase Ii ◽  
Elongation Factor ◽  
Viral Rna ◽  
In Vitro Translation ◽  
Virus Protein ◽  
Transcriptional Elongation

Eucaryotic transcription factors that stimulate RNA polymerase II by increasing the efficiency of elongation of specifically or randomly initiated RNA chains have been isolated and characterized. We have identified a 30-kilodalton (kDa) vaccinia virus-encoded protein with apparent homology to SII, a 34-kDa mammalian transcriptional elongation factor. In addition to amino acid sequence similarities, both proteins contain C-terminal putative zinc finger domains. Identification of the gene, rpo30, encoding the vaccinia virus protein was achieved by using antibody to the purified viral RNA polymerase for immunoprecipitation of the in vitro translation products of in vivo-synthesized early mRNA selected by hybridization to cloned DNA fragments of the viral genome. Western immunoblot analysis using antiserum made to the vaccinia rpo30 protein expressed in bacteria indicated that the 30-kDa protein remains associated with highly purified viral RNA polymerase. Thus, the vaccinia virus protein, unlike its eucaryotic homolog, is an integral RNA polymerase subunit rather than a readily separable transcription factor. Further studies showed that the expression of rpo30 is regulated by dual early and later promoters.

scholarly journals CDK8/19 Mediator kinases potentiate induction of transcription by NFκB

2017 ◽  
Vol 114 (38) ◽  
pp. 10208-10213 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mengqian Chen ◽  
Jiaxin Liang ◽  
Hao Ji ◽  
Zhengguan Yang ◽  
Serena Altilia ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Transcription Factors ◽  
Rna Polymerase Ii ◽  
Kinase Inhibitors ◽  
Viral Infections ◽  
Nuclear Factor Κb ◽  
Therapeutic Benefit ◽  
Transcriptional Elongation ◽  
Transcriptional Reprogramming ◽  
Basal Expression ◽  
Development And Differentiation

The nuclear factor-κB (NFκB) family of transcription factors has been implicated in inflammatory disorders, viral infections, and cancer. Most of the drugs that inhibit NFκB show significant side effects, possibly due to sustained NFκB suppression. Drugs affecting induced, but not basal, NFκB activity may have the potential to provide therapeutic benefit without associated toxicity. NFκB activation by stress-inducible cell cycle inhibitor p21 was shown to be mediated by a p21-stimulated transcription-regulating kinase CDK8. CDK8 and its paralog CDK19, associated with the transcriptional Mediator complex, act as coregulators of several transcription factors implicated in cancer; CDK8/19 inhibitors are entering clinical development. Here we show that CDK8/19 inhibition by different small-molecule kinase inhibitors or shRNAs suppresses the elongation of NFκB-induced transcription when such transcription is activated by p21-independent canonical inducers, such as TNFα. On NFκB activation, CDK8/19 are corecruited with NFκB to the promoters of the responsive genes. Inhibition of CDK8/19 kinase activity suppresses the RNA polymerase II C-terminal domain phosphorylation required for transcriptional elongation, in a gene-specific manner. Genes coregulated by CDK8/19 and NFκB includeIL8,CXCL1, andCXCL2, which encode tumor-promoting proinflammatory cytokines. Although it suppressed newly induced NFκB-driven transcription, CDK8/19 inhibition in most cases had no effect on the basal expression of NFκB-regulated genes or promoters; the same selective regulation of newly induced transcription was observed with other transcription signals potentiated by CDK8/19. This selective role of CDK8/19 identifies these kinases as mediators of transcriptional reprogramming, a key aspect of development and differentiation as well as pathological processes.

scholarly journals A machine learning-based framework for modeling transcription elongation

2021 ◽  
Vol 118 (6) ◽  
pp. e2007450118
Author(s):  
Peiyuan Feng ◽  
An Xiao ◽  
Meng Fang ◽  
Fangping Wan ◽  
Shuya Li ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Rna Polymerase Ii ◽  
High Throughput Sequencing ◽  
Gene Expression Regulation ◽  
Transcription Elongation ◽  
Transcriptional Elongation ◽  
Sequencing Data ◽  
Pol Ii ◽  
High Throughput Sequencing Data ◽  
Pol Ii Pausing ◽  
Elongation Process

RNA polymerase II (Pol II) generally pauses at certain positions along gene bodies, thereby interrupting the transcription elongation process, which is often coupled with various important biological functions, such as precursor mRNA splicing and gene expression regulation. Characterizing the transcriptional elongation dynamics can thus help us understand many essential biological processes in eukaryotic cells. However, experimentally measuring Pol II elongation rates is generally time and resource consuming. We developed PEPMAN (polymerase II elongation pausing modeling through attention-based deep neural network), a deep learning-based model that accurately predicts Pol II pausing sites based on the native elongating transcript sequencing (NET-seq) data. Through fully taking advantage of the attention mechanism, PEPMAN is able to decipher important sequence features underlying Pol II pausing. More importantly, we demonstrated that the analyses of the PEPMAN-predicted results around various types of alternative splicing sites can provide useful clues into understanding the cotranscriptional splicing events. In addition, associating the PEPMAN prediction results with different epigenetic features can help reveal important factors related to the transcription elongation process. All these results demonstrated that PEPMAN can provide a useful and effective tool for modeling transcription elongation and understanding the related biological factors from available high-throughput sequencing data.

scholarly journals Mutant huntingtin impairs PNKP and ATXN3, disrupting DNA repair and transcription

eLife ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rui Gao ◽  
Anirban Chakraborty ◽  
Charlene Geater ◽  
Subrata Pradhan ◽  
Kara L Gordon ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Dna Damage ◽  
Dna Repair ◽  
Rna Polymerase Ii ◽  
Dna Damage Response ◽  
Functional Decline ◽  
Transcriptional Elongation ◽  
Damage Repair ◽  
Damage Response ◽  
Cyclic Amp Response Element ◽  
Atm Signaling

How huntingtin (HTT) triggers neurotoxicity in Huntington’s disease (HD) remains unclear. We report that HTT forms a transcription-coupled DNA repair (TCR) complex with RNA polymerase II subunit A (POLR2A), ataxin-3, the DNA repair enzyme polynucleotide-kinase-3'-phosphatase (PNKP), and cyclic AMP-response element-binding (CREB) protein (CBP). This complex senses and facilitates DNA damage repair during transcriptional elongation, but its functional integrity is impaired by mutant HTT. Abrogated PNKP activity results in persistent DNA break accumulation, preferentially in actively transcribed genes, and aberrant activation of DNA damage-response ataxia telangiectasia-mutated (ATM) signaling in HD transgenic mouse and cell models. A concomitant decrease in Ataxin-3 activity facilitates CBP ubiquitination and degradation, adversely impacting transcription and DNA repair. Increasing PNKP activity in mutant cells improves genome integrity and cell survival. These findings suggest a potential molecular mechanism of how mutant HTT activates DNA damage-response pro-degenerative pathways and impairs transcription, triggering neurotoxicity and functional decline in HD.

scholarly journals Promoter-specific changes in initiation, elongation and homeostasis of histone H3 acetylation during CBP/p300 inhibition

eLife ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Hsu ◽  
Nathan R Zemke ◽  
Arnold J Berk
Keyword(s):  
Rna Polymerase Ii ◽  
Control Point ◽  
Histone H3 ◽  
Airway Epithelial Cells ◽  
Proximal Region ◽  
Transferase Activity ◽  
Transcriptional Elongation ◽  
Elongation Complex ◽  
Histone H3 Acetylation ◽  
H3 Acetylation

Regulation of RNA Polymerase II (Pol2) elongation in the promoter proximal region is an important and ubiquitous control point for gene expression in metazoans. We report that transcription of the adenovirus 5 E4 region is regulated during the release of paused Pol2 into productive elongation by recruitment of the super elongation complex (SEC), dependent on promoter H3K18/27 acetylation by CBP/p300. We also establish that this is a general transcriptional regulatory mechanism that applies to ~6% of expressed protein-coding genes in primary human airway epithelial cells. We observed that a homeostatic mechanism maintains promoter, but not enhancer H3K18/27ac in response to extensive inhibition of CBP/p300 acetyl transferase activity by the highly specific small molecule inhibitor A-485. Further, our results suggest a function for BRD4 association at enhancers in regulating paused Pol2 release at nearby promoters. Taken together, our results uncover processes regulating transcriptional elongation by promoter region histone H3 acetylation and homeostatic maintenance of promoter, but not enhancer, H3K18/27ac in response to inhibition of CBP/p300 acetyl transferase activity.

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