Project description:CD4+ T cells play a critical role in sustaining the effector function of CD8+ T cells during chronic viral infection. When CD4+ T cell “help” is absent, CD8+ T cells enter a dysfunctional state, losing their capacity for viral control. However, when CD4+ T cell help is present, a heterogenous population of virus-specific CD8+ T cells are present. Here, we applied scRNA-seq to distinguish CD8+ T cell heterogeneity during LCMV Clone 13 infection.
Project description:Previously, we described a novel alternative to chromatin immunoprecipitation, CUT&RUN, in which unfixed permeabilized cells are incubated with antibody, followed by binding of a protein A-Micrococcal Nuclease (pA/MNase) fusion protein (Skene and Henikoff, 2017). Here we introduce three enhancements to CUT&RUN: A hybrid protein A-Protein G-MNase construct that expands antibody compatibility and simplifies purification, a modified digestion protocol that inhibits premature release of the nuclease-bound complex, and a calibration strategy based on carry-over of E. coli DNA introduced with the fusion protein. These new features, coupled with the previously described low-cost, high efficiency, high reproducibility and high-throughput capability of CUT&RUN make it the method of choice for routine epigenomic profiling.
Project description:Ewing sarcomas harbor few mutations beyond the chromosomal translocation that initiates disease and the mechanistic basis for the metastasis of these tumors remains poorly understood. The epigenome of Ewing sarcoma (EWS) cells reflects the regulatory state of genes associated with the DNA binding activity of the fusion oncoproteins EWSR1::FLI1 or EWSR1::ERG. In this study, we examined the repressive activities of the EWSR1::FLI1/ERG fusion oncoproteins. Focusing on one of the repressed EWSR1::FLI1/ERG target genes, ETS1, we detected EWSR1::FLI1 binding and a H3K27me3 repressive mark at this locus. Depletion of EWSR1::FLI1 results in ETS1’s binding of promoter regions, and we show ETS1 regulates the expression of multiple proteins that function in extracellular matrix organization including TENSIN3 (TSN3). Interestingly, TSN3 expression in EWS tumors significantly correlates with that of ETS1 (0.85, FDR <0.01). TNS3 is a focal adhesion protein that contributes to tumor cell migration by connecting the cytoplasmic tail of integrins to the actin cytoskeleton. EWS cell lines, in which we activated ETS1 expression (CRISPRa) exhibited increased TNS3 expression and a migratory phenotype. Critically, the activated ETS1 EWS cell lines show TNS3 accumulation at leading cell edges, with F-actin cytoskeletal reorganization, a phenotype associated with cell migration.
Project description:The long noncoding RNA Malat1 impacts the differentiation of effector and memory CD8+ T cell subsets by virtue of preferential epigenetic repression of memory-associated genes in terminal effector cells through an interaction with Ezh2
Project description:We introduce CUT&RUNTools as a flexible, general pipeline for facilitating the identification of chromatin-associated protein binding and genomic footprinting analysis from antibody-targeted CUT&RUN primary cleavage data. CUT&RUNTools extracts endonuclease cut site information from sequences of short-read fragments and produces single-locus binding estimates, aggregate motif footprints, and informative visualizations to support the high-resolution mapping capability of CUT&RUN. CUT&RUNTools is available at https://bitbucket.org/qzhudfci/cutruntools/ .
Project description:BackgroundCell fate decisions are governed by interactions between sequence-specific transcription factors and a dynamic chromatin landscape. Zebrafish offer a powerful system for probing the mechanisms that drive these cell fate choices, especially in the context of early embryogenesis. However, technical challenges associated with conventional methods for chromatin profiling have slowed progress toward understanding the exact relationships between chromatin changes, transcription factor binding, and cellular differentiation during zebrafish embryogenesis.ResultsTo overcome these challenges, we adapted the chromatin profiling methods Cleavage Under Targets and Release Using Nuclease (CUT&RUN) and CUT&Tag for use in zebrafish and applied these methods to generate high-resolution enrichment maps for H3K4me3, H3K27me3, H3K9me3, RNA polymerase II, and the histone variant H2A.Z using tissue isolated from whole, mid-gastrula stage embryos. Using this data, we identify a subset of genes that may be bivalently regulated during both zebrafish and mouse gastrulation, provide evidence for an evolving H2A.Z landscape during embryo development, and demonstrate the effectiveness of CUT&RUN for detecting H3K9me3 enrichment at repetitive sequences.ConclusionsOur results demonstrate the power of combining CUT&RUN and CUT&Tag methods with the strengths of the zebrafish system to define emerging chromatin landscapes in the context of vertebrate embryogenesis.
Project description:CD4+ T cells play a critical role in sustaining the effector function of CD8+ T cells during chronic viral infection. When CD4+ T cell “help” is absent, CD8+ T cells enter a dysfunctional state, losing their capacity for viral control. Here, we applied spatial transcriptomics to explore cellular localization and potential interaction between key immune cell subsets during chronic LCMV Clone 13 infection.