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Cohesin and CTCF control chromosomal contact dynamics in living cells [integration sites]

ABSTRACT: Mammalian chromosomes are partitioned into topologically associating domains (TADs) by the loop-extrusion activity of cohesin that is blocked at specific DNA sites bound by CTCF. Chromosome structure inside TADs is highly variable in single cells, yet little is known about its temporal dynamics, how it influences the rates and durations of chromosomal contacts, and how it depends on CTCF and cohesin. To address these questions we combine two quantitative live-cell imaging strategies that minimize locus-specific confounding effects. We show that loop extrusion by cohesin globally reduces the mobility of the chromatin fiber in living cells, while also increasing the rates of formation and durations of contacts between sequences inside the same TAD. Quantitative analysis of high-resolution microscopy data reveals that contacts assemble and disassemble frequently in the course of the cell cycle, and become substantially more frequent and longer in the presence of convergent CTCF sites. Comparison with polymer modeling additionally reveals that cohesin-mediated CTCF loops last around 10 minutes on average. Our data support the notion that chromosome structure within TADs is highly dynamic and provide a quantitative framework for understanding the principles that link chromosome structure to biological function.

ORGANISM(S): Mus musculus

PROVIDER: GSE197237 | GEO | 2022/02/27

REPOSITORIES: GEO

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Project description:Cohesin organizes mammalian interphase chromosomes by reeling chromatin fibers into dynamic loops. "Loop extrusion" is obstructed when cohesin encounters a properly oriented CTCF protein. It has been proposed that transcription relocalizes or interferes with cohesin, and that active transcription start sites function as cohesin loading sites, but how these effects, and transcription in general, shape chromatin is unknown. To determine whether transcription can modulate loop extrusion, we studied cells in which the primary extrusion barriers could be removed by CTCF depletion and cohesin’s residence time and abundance on chromatin could be increased by Wapl knockout. We found evidence that transcription directly interacts with loop extrusion through a novel "moving barrier" mechanism, but not by loading cohesin at active promoters. Hi-C experiments showed intricate, cohesin-dependent genomic contact patterns near actively transcribed genes, and in CTCF-Wapl double knockout (DKO) cells, genomic contacts were enriched between sites of transcription-driven cohesin localization ("cohesin islands"). Similar patterns also emerged in polymer simulations in which transcribing RNA polymerases (RNAPs) acted as "moving barriers" by impeding, slowing, or pushing loop-extruding cohesins. The model predicts that cohesin does not load preferentially at promoters and instead accumulates at TSSs due to the barrier function of RNAPs. We tested this prediction by new ChIP-seq experiments, which revealed that the "cohesin loader" Nipbl co-localizes with cohesin, but, unlike in previous reports, Nipbl did not accumulate at active promoters. We propose that RNAP acts as a new type of barrier to loop extrusion that, unlike CTCF, is not stationary in its precise genomic position, but is itself dynamically translocating and relocalizes cohesin along DNA. In this way, loop extrusion could enable translocating RNAPs to maintain contacts with distal regulatory elements, allowing transcriptional activity to shape genomic functional organization.

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Cohesin and CTCF control chromosomal contact dynamics in living cells [integration sites]

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