Project description:14 ChIP-Seq datasets of H3K27ac in human pancreatic islets from 14 donors, where islets were treated in high (11mM) glucose conditions. Samples IDs HI-129, HI-130, HI-131, HI-132, HI-135, HI-137 and HI-152 were also cultured in low glucose conditions.
Project description:Insulin-secreting β cells and glucagon-secreting α cells maintain physiological blood glucose levels, and their malfunction drives diabetes development. Using ChIP sequencing and RNA sequencing analysis, we determined the epigenetic and transcriptional landscape of human pancreatic α, β, and exocrine cells. We found that, compared with exocrine and β cells, differentiated α cells exhibited many more genes bivalently marked by the activating H3K4me3 and repressing H3K27me3 histone modifications. This was particularly true for β cell signature genes involved in transcriptional regulation. Remarkably, thousands of these genes were in a monovalent state in β cells, carrying only the activating or repressing mark. Our epigenomic findings suggested that α to β cell reprogramming could be promoted by manipulating the histone methylation signature of human pancreatic islets. Indeed, we show that treatment of cultured pancreatic islets with a histone methyltransferase inhibitor leads to colocalization of both glucagon and insulin and glucagon and insulin promoter factor 1 (PDX1) in human islets and colocalization of both glucagon and insulin in mouse islets. Thus, mammalian pancreatic islet cells display cell-type–specific epigenomic plasticity, suggesting that epigenomic manipulation could provide a path to cell reprogramming and novel cell replacement-based therapies for diabetes. Pancreatic islets were collected post-mortem from 6 human donors and subjected to FACS to separate populations of alpha, beta, and exocrine cells. Depending on the availability of resulting material, sorted islet cell populations were used for H3K4me3, H3K27me3 ChIP-seq, or RNA-seq analysis. All ChIP-seq samples have a corresponding input from the same sample.
Project description:Mediator, a co-regulator required for RNA pol II activity, interacts with tissue-specific transcription factors to regulate development and maintain homeostasis. We sought to understand whether Mediator subunit MED15 acts as a node that controls tissue-specific gene expression, using pancreatic insulin-producing β-cell maturation as a model. We found Med15 to be expressed during mouse pancreatic organogenesis and β-cell maturation; moreover, islets from human T2D donors feature reduced MED15 expression. Loss of Med15 in mouse β-cells caused defects in maturation without affecting β-cell mass or insulin expression. ChIP-seq and co-immunoprecipitation analyses determined that Med15 binds β-cell transcription factors Nkx6-1 and NeuroD1 to regulate key β-cell maturation genes. Human embryonic stem cell derived β-like cells, genetically engineered to express high levels of MED15, had increased maturation markers and improved insulin secretion. We provide the first evidence of the importance of Mediator in β-cell maturation and demonstrate an additional layer of control that tunes transcription factor function.