Antagonism between the Master Regulators of Differentiation Ensures the Discreteness and Robustness of Cell Fates
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ABSTRACT: The discreteness of cell fates is an inherent and fundamental feature of multicellular organisms. Here we show that cross-antagonistic mechanisms of actions of MyoD and PPARg, which are the master regulators of muscle and adipose differentiation, respectively, confer the robustness to the integrity of cell differentiation. Simultaneous expression of MyoD and PPARg in mesenchymal stem/stromal cells led to the generation of a mixture of multinucleated myotubes and lipid-filled adipocytes. Interestingly, hybrid cells, i.e., lipid-filled myotubes, were not generated, suggesting that these differentiation programs are mutually exclusive. Mechanistically, while exogenously expressed MyoD was rapidly degraded in adipocytes through ubiquitin-proteasome pathways, exogenously expressed PPARg was not down-regulated in myotubes. In PPARg-expressing myotubes, PPARg-dependent histone hyperacetylation was inhibited in a subset of adipogenic gene loci, including that of C/EBPa, an essential effector of PPARg. Thus, the cross-repressive interactions between MyoD- and PPARg-induced differentiation programs ensure the discrete cell fate decisions. To gain insights into the mechanisms by which adipogenic differentiation is inhibited in PPARg-expressing myotubes, we performed microarray analysis to compare gene expression profiles of the myotube-enriched (M) fraction and the adipocyte-enriched (A) fraction. M fraction and A fraction were obtained by fractionating a mixture of myotubes and adipocytes, which was generated by simultaneous expression of MyoD and PPARg, according to cell size. Microarray analysis was performed using mRNA isolated from C3H10T1/2 cells. We used five samples: non-infected cells, control lentivirus-infected cells, HA-PPARg-infected cells, and cells co-infected with Myc-MyoD and HA-PPARg and then fractionated accroding to cell size (M-fraction and A-fraction). Total RNA was prepared using the RNeasy Mini Kit (Qiagen) according to the manufacturer’s instruction. Other procedures including hybridization to the Mouse Gene 1.0 ST array (Affymetrix) were performed according to Affymetrix protocols. The affymetrix outputs (CEL files) were imported into GeneSpring GX 11.0.2 (Agilent Technologies) microarray analysis software for presentation of the expression profiles. Probe intensities were normalized, and expression signals of all genes (probe sets) were calculated using RMA (robust multi-array analysis, as implemented in GeneSpring GX).
ORGANISM(S): Mus musculus
SUBMITTER: Eisuke Nishida
PROVIDER: E-GEOD-56082 | biostudies-arrayexpress |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-arrayexpress
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