Project description:Genome Wide Association Studies (GWAS) have been successful in yielding >60 loci for Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE). However, it is known that GWAS just reports genomic signals and not necessarily the precise localization of culprit genes, with eQTL efforts only able to infer causality to a minority of such loci. Thus, we sought to carry out physical and direct ‘variant to gene mapping’ by integrating results from high-throughput chromatin conformation capture and ATAC-seq assays. This experiment refers to the ATAC-seq part of our work. To determine informative proxy SNPs for each of the SLE GWAS sentinel loci, we generated ATAC-seq open chromatin maps for primary human T Follicular Helper (TFH) cells from tonsils of healthy volunteers (3 biological replicates), a model relevant to SLE as TFH operate upstream of the activation of pathogenic autoantibody-producing B cells during the disease. We also generated open chromatin maps for naive CD4-positive helper T cells (3 biological replicates).
Project description:Activated T cells differentiate into functional subsets which require distinct metabolic programs. Glutaminase (GLS) converts glutamine to glutamate to provide substrate for the tricarboxylic acid cycle and epigenetic reactions and here we identify a key role for GLS in T cell activation and specification. Though GLS-deficiency diminished T cell activation, proliferation and impaired differentiation of Th17 cells, loss of GLS also increased Tbet and Interferon-γ expression and CD4 Th1 and CD8 CTL effector cell differentiation. These changes were mediated by differentially altered gene expression and chromatin accessibility, leading to increased sensitivity of Th1 cells to IL-2 mediated mTORC1 signaling. In vivo, GLS-null T cells failed to drive a Th17 mediated Graft-vs-Host Disease model. Transient inhibition of GLS, however, increased Th1 and CTL T cell numbers in viral and chimeric antigen receptor models. Glutamine metabolism thus has distinct roles to promote Th17 but constrain Th1 and CTL effector cell differentiation.
Project description:We analysed gene expression profiles in dental follicle cells after 7 days of osteogenic differentiation with different inducers. Total RNAs were isolated from dental follicle cells after 7 days of differentiation with dexamethasone, BMP2, IGF2 and for control with standard cell culture medium
Project description:We used ATAC-seq (Buenrostro et al, 2013) to identify regions of open chromatin in FACS sorted mouse endothelial cells from E12.5 hearts. Please note that the animals were injected at different dates, which resulted in different effects of the knockout, as indicated in the batch attribute of the samples. This data set is part of the study \Endocardial Tbx20 is essential for mesenchymal and myocardial cell movements required for cardiac septation\. Peaks were called using HOMER (-gsize 1.87e9 -region -tbp 1). Replicate 1: -fdr 1e-8, replicate 2: default parameters. Buenrostro JD, Giresi PG, Zaba LC, Chang HY, Greenleaf WJ. 2013. Transposition of native chromatin for fast and sensitive epigenomic profiling of open chromatin, DNA-binding proteins and nucleosome position. Nat Methods 10: 12138.
Project description:To identify osteoblast specific miRNAs that can contribute to osteoblastogenesis by post-transcriptionally regulates their targets, BMP2 are treated to C2C12 for 72 hours and performed miRNA microarray. C2C12 cells were treated with vehicles or BMP2 (300 ng/mL) supplemented alpha-MEM media for 72 days and total RNA was harvested and performed exiqon miRNA microarray. Duplicates were used for each condition. Dye swaps were done.
Project description:Transcription factors are often regarded as having two distinct components: a DNA binding domain (DBD) to allow binding to the regulatory region of a target gene and a trans-acting functional domain (FD) to modulate gene expression. Recently, it is becoming clear that the DBDs of transcription factors alone are incapable of providing sufficient specificity to account for the highly complex genomic structures in eukaryotes. Other regions, outside of the DBD, may play a role in transcription factor DNA binding specificity in vivo. In order to test this hypothesis, we examined a model zinc finger transcription factor, Krüppel-like factor 3 (KLF3) with a FD that recruits partner proteins for its repressive activity and a three zinc finger DBD. Previously, we showed that deletion of the entire KLF3 FD reduced DNA binding across the genome. This implied the importance of the FD for in vivo DNA binding specificity. In the current study, we fused the KLF3 FD onto an unrelated, but well characterised Artificial Zinc Finger (AZF) targeting a standard target gene, VEGF-A. We compared the genomic DNA binding profile of this chimeric KLF3 construct, termed KLF3FD-AZF, to that of the AZF alone. Chromatin Immunoprecipitation followed by next generation sequencing was used to assess genomic wide DNA-binding of these AZFs. Remarkably, in these gain-of-function experiments, we again observed that the KLF3 FD is critical for in vivo DNA binding specificity. The addition of KLF3 FD increased the number of binding sites by more than two fold compared to the AZF alone. KLF3 FD also directed more binding to the promoter regions. Further investigations of these acquired sites identified a substantial portion of these sites as the known endogenous KLF3 bound regions, whilst others contain sequences that are similar but not identical to the predicted AZF target sequence. These results clearly demonstrate that the specific localisation of this model transcription factor to target genes is not solely dependent on the DBD and that the regions outside of this domain may also play an important role. ChIP-Seq experiments were performed on four HEK293 cell lines, two each stably expressing AZF or KLF3FD.AZF or KLF3FD only (two biological replicates). Input samples were included as controls.