Project description:Loss of PTPN11/SHP2 in mice or in human metachondromatosis (MC) patients causes benign cartilage tumors on the bone surface (exostoses) and within bones (enchondromas). To elucidate the mechanisms underlying cartilage tumor formation, we investigated the role of SHP2 in the specification, maturation and organization of chondrocytes. Firstly, we studied chondrocyte maturation by performing RNA-seq on primary chondrocyte pellet cultures. We found that SHP2 depletion, or inhibition of the ERK1/2 pathway, delays the terminal differentiation of chondrocytes from the early-hypertrophic to the late-hypertrophic stage. Secondly, we studied chondrocyte maturation and organization in mice with a mosaic postnatal inactivation of Ptpn11 in chondrocytes. We found that the vertebral growth plates of these mice have expanded domains of early-hypertrophic chondrocytes that have not yet terminally differentiated, and their enchondroma-like lesions arise from chondrocytes displaced from the growth plate due to a disruption in the organization of maturation and ossification zones. Furthermore, we observed that lesions from human MC patients also display disorganized chondrocyte maturation zones. Next, we found that inactivation of Ptpn11 in Fsp1-Cre-expressing fibroblasts induces exostosis-like outgrowths, suggesting that loss of SHP2 in cells on the bone surface and at bone-ligament attachment sites induces ectopic chondrogenesis. Finally, we performed lineage tracing to show that exostoses and enchondromas in mice likely contain mixtures of wild-type and SHP2-deficient chondrocytes. Together, these data indicate that in patients with MC, who are heterozygous for inherited PTPN11 loss-of-function mutations, second-hit mutations in PTPN11 can induce enchondromas by disrupting the organization and delaying the terminal differentiation of growth plate chondrocytes, and can induce exostoses by causing ectopic chondrogenesis of cells on the bone surface. Furthermore, the data are consistent with paracrine signaling from SHP2-deficient cells causing SHP2-sufficient cells to be incorporated into the lesions.

Project description:Kabuki Syndrome (KS) is a multisystemic rare disorder, characterized by growth delay, distinctive facial features, intellectual disability, and rarely autism spectrum disorder. This condition is mostly caused by de novo mutations of KMT2D, encoding a catalytic subunit of the COMPASS complex involved in enhancer regulation. KMT2D catalyzes the deposition of histone-3-lysine-4 mono-methyl (H3K4Me1) that marks active and poised enhancers. To assess the impact of KMT2D mutations in the chromatin landscape of KS tissues, we have generated patient-derived induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC), which we further differentiated into neural crest stem cells (NCSC), mesenchymal stem cells (MSC) and cortical neurons (iN). In addition, we further collected blood samples from 5 additional KS patients. To complete our disease modeling cohort we generated an isogenic KMT2D mutant line from human embryonic stem cells, which we differentiated into neural precursor and mature neurons. Micro-electrode-array (MEA)-based neural network analysis of KS iNs revealed an altered pattern of spontaneous network-bursts in a Kabuki-specific pattern. RNA-seq profiling was performed to relate this aberrant MEA pattern to transcriptional dysregulations, revealing that dysregulated genes were enriched for neuronal functions, such as ion channels, synapse activity, and electrophysiological activity. Here we show that KMT2D haploinsufficiency tends to heavily affect the transcriptome of cortical neurons and differentiated tissues while sparing multipotent states, suggesting that KMT2D has a most prevalent role in terminally differentiated cell and activate transcriptional circuitry unique to each cell type. Moreover, thorough profiling of H3K4Me1 unveiled the almost complete uncoupling between this chromatin mark and the regulatory effects of KMT2D on transcription, which is instead reflected by a defect of H3K27Ac. By integrating RNA-seq with ChIP-seq data we defined TEAD and REST as the master effectors of KMT2D haploinsufficiency. Also, we identified a subset of genes whose regulation is controlled by the balance between KMT2D and EZH2 dosage. Finally, we identified the bona fide direct targets of KMT2D in healthy and KS mature cortical neurons and TEAD2 as the main proxy of KMT2D dysregulation in KS. Overall, our study provides the transcriptional and epigenomic characterization of patient-derived tissues as well as iPSCs and differentiated disease-relevant cell types, as well as the identification of KMT2D direct target in cortical neurons, together with the identification of a neuronal phenotype of the spontaneous electrical activity.

Dataset Information

Precocious chondrocyte differentiation disrupts skeletal growth in Kabuki syndrome mice.

Publications

Precocious chondrocyte differentiation disrupts skeletal growth in Kabuki syndrome mice.

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