Reorganization of 3D chromatin architecture in doxorubicin-resistant breast cancer cells
Ontology highlight
ABSTRACT: Doxorubicin resistance remains a major therapeutic challenge leading to treatment failure and poor survival prognosis in breast cancer. Although doxorubicin induces massive changes in the transcriptional landscape accompanied by alterations of chromatin accessibility are well known, potential diagnostic or therapeutic targets associated with three-dimensional (3D) genome reorganization in doxorubicin-resistant breast cancer cells have not yet been systematically investigated. Here we performed integrated analyses combining in situ high-throughput chromosome conformation capture (Hi-C), ATAC-seq and mHi-C data on doxorubicin-resistant MCF7 human breast cancer cells compared to parental cells. It revealed that A/B compartment switching was positively correlated to genome-wide differential gene expression, and the genome was spatially reorganized into smaller topologically associating domains (TADs) and loops. We also revealed the contribution of increased chromatin accessibility and potential transcription factor families, including CTCF and BORIS, to gained TAD boundaries and loop anchors. Intriguingly, we observed two condensed genomic regions (~20kb) with decreased chromatin accessibility flanking TAD boundaries, which might play a critical role in the formation or maintenance of TADs. Moreover, we identified a number of gained and lost enhancer-promoter interactions associated with differentially expressed genes, including FA2H, FOXA1, JRKL and EZH, some of which involved in chromatin organization and breast cancer signaling pathways. This study uncovered a close connection between 3D genome reorganization, chromatin accessibility as well as gene transcription, and provides resources and novel insights into the epigenomic mechanisms with potential therapeutic implications for doxorubicin resistance in breast cancer.
Project description:Recent advances enabled by Hi-C technique have unraveled principles of chromosomal folding, which were since linked to many genomic processes. In particular, Hi-C revealed that chromosomes of animals are organized into Topologically Associating Domains (TADs), evolutionary conserved compact chromatin domains that influence gene expression. However, mechanisms that underlie partitioning of the genome into TADs remain poorly understood. To explore principals of TAD folding in Drosophila melanogaster, we performed Hi-C and PolyA+ RNA-seq in four cell lines of various origins (S2, Kc167, DmBG3-c2, and OSC). Contrary to previous studies, we find that regions between TADs (i.e. the inter-TADs and TAD boundaries) in Drosophila are only weakly enriched with the insulator protein dCTCF, while another insulator protein Su(Hw) is preferentially present within TADs. However, Drosophila inter-TADs harbor active chromatin and constitutively transcribed (housekeeping) genes. Accordingly, we find that binding of insulator proteins dCTCF and Su(Hw) predict TAD boundaries much worse than the active chromatin marks (in the minimal case, H3K4me3 and total RNA) do. Moreover, inter-TADs correspond to decompacted interbands of polytene chromosomes, whereas TADs mostly correspond to densely packed bands. Collectively, our results suggest that TADs are condensed chromatin domains depleted in active chromatin marks, separated by regions of active chromatin that cannot be organized into compact structures, possibly due to high levels of histone acetylation. Finally, we test this hypothesis by polymer simulations, and find that TAD partitioning can be explained by different modes of inter-nucleosomal interactions for active and inactive chromatin. Hi-C experiments, PolyA+ RNA profiling and mapping of chromosomal rearrangements in four Drosophila melanogaster cell lines.
Project description:Serum response factor (SRF) is a transcription factor essential for cell proliferation, differentiation, and migration, and is required for primitive streak and mesoderm formation in the embryo. The canonical roles of SRF are mediated by a diverse set of context-dependent cofactors. Here we show that SRF physically interacts with CTCF and cohesin subunits at TAD boundaries and loop anchors. SRF reinforces the insulation of TADs and promotes the formation of long-range chromatin loops. In ES cells, SRF associates with Oct4, Sox2, and Nanog and contributes to the formation of 3D pluripotency hubs. Our findings reveal new roles of SRF in higher-order chromatin organization.
Project description:Three-dimensional genome structure plays an important role in gene regulation. Globally chromosomes are organized into active and inactive compartments, while at the gene level looping interactions connect promoters to regulatory elements. Topologically Associating Domains (TADs), typically several hundred kilobases in size form an intermediate level of organization. Major questions include how TADs are formed and what their relation is with looping interactions between genes and regulatory elements. Here we performed a focused 5C analysis of a 2.8 Mb region on chromosome 7 surrounding CFTR in a panel of cell types. We find that the same TAD boundaries are present in all cell types, indicating that TADs represent a universal chromosome architecture. Further, we find that these TAD boundaries are present irrespective of expression and looping of genes located between them. In contrast looping interactions between promoters and regulatory elements are cell-type specific and occur mostly within TADs. This is exemplified by the CFTR promoter that in different cell types interacts with distinct sets of distal cell type-specific regulatory elements that are all located within the same TAD. Finally, we find that long-range associations between loci located in different TADs are also detected but these display much lower interaction frequencies than looping interactions within TADs. Interestingly, interactions between TADs are also highly cell type-specific and often involve loci clustered around TAD boundaries. These data point to key roles of invariant TAD boundaries in constraining as well as mediating cell type-specific long-range interactions and gene regulation. We investigated a 2.8 Mb region on Chromosome 7 (hg18 chr7: 115797757-118405450) containing the ENCODE region ENm001 42. The 5C experiment was designed to interrogate looping interactions between HindIII fragments containing transcription start sites (TSSs) and any other HindIII restriction fragment (distal fragments) in the target region. Libraries were generated for five cell lines: Caco2, Calu3, Capan1, GM12878 and HepG2, with two biological replicates for each line. 5C probes were designed at HindIII restriction sites (AAGCTT) using 5C primer design tools previously developed and made publicly available online at our My5C website (http://my5C.umassmed.edu). Probes were designed based on the ENCODE manual region 1 (ENM001) design 25 with additional probes placed throughout the region when appropriate. We also added probes to extend the analysis to include a 700 Kb gene desert region located directly adjacent to ENM001. Probe settings were: U-BLAST, 3; S-BLAST, 100; 15-MER, 3,000; MIN_FSIZE, 250; MAX_FSIZE, 20,000; OPT_TM, 65; OPT_PSIZE, 40. We designed 74 reverse 5C probes, and 605 forward 5C probes.
Project description:Three-dimensional chromatin structures undergo dynamic reorganization during mammalian spermatogenesis; however, their impacts on gene regulation remain unclear. Here, we focused on understanding the structure-function regulation of meiotic chromosomes by Hi-C and other omics techniques in mouse spermatogenesis across five sequential stages. Beyond confirming recent reports regarding changes in compartmentalization and reorganization of topologically associating domains (TADs), we further demonstrated that chromatin loops are present prior to and after, but not at, the pachytene stage. By integrating Hi-C and RNA-Seq data, we showed that the switching of A/B compartments between spermatogenic stages is tightly associated with meiosis-specific mRNAs and piRNAs expression. Moreover, our ATAC-Seq data indicated that chromatin accessibility per se is not responsible for the TAD and loop diminishment at pachytene. Additionally, our ChIP-Seq data demonstrated that CTCF and cohesin remain bound at TAD boundary regions throughout meiosis, suggesting that dynamic reorganization of TADs does not require CTCF and cohesin clearance.
Project description:The relationship between evolutionary genome remodeling and the three-dimensional structure of the genome remain largely unexplored. Here we use the heavily rearranged gibbon genome to examine how evolutionary chromosomal rearrangements impact genome-wide chromatin interactions, topologically associating domains (TADs), and their epigenetic landscape. We use high-resolution maps of gibbon-human breaks of synteny (BOS), apply Hi-C in gibbon, measure an array of epigenetic features, and perform cross-species comparisons. We find that gibbon rearrangements occur at TAD boundaries, independent of the parameters used to identify TADs. This overlap is supported by a remarkable genetic and epigenetic similarity between BOS and TAD boundaries, namely presence of CpG islands and SINE elements, and enrichment in CTCF and H3K4me3 binding. Cross-species comparisons reveal that regions orthologous to BOS also correspond with boundaries of large (400-600kb) TADs in human and other mammalian species. The co-localization of rearrangement breakpoints and TAD boundaries may be due to higher chromatin fragility at these locations and/or increased selective pressure against rearrangements that disrupt TAD integrity. We also examine the small portion of BOS that did not overlap with TAD boundaries and gave rise to novel TADs in the gibbon genome. We postulate that these new TADs generally lack deleterious consequences. Lastly, we show that limited epigenetic homogenization occurs across breakpoints, irrespective of their time of occurrence in the gibbon lineage. Overall, our findings demonstrate remarkable conservation of chromatin interactions and epigenetic landscape in gibbons, in spite of extensive genomic shuffling.
Project description:The relationship between evolutionary genome remodeling and the three-dimensional structure of the genome remain largely unexplored. Here we use the heavily rearranged gibbon genome to examine how evolutionary chromosomal rearrangements impact genome-wide chromatin interactions, topologically associating domains (TADs), and their epigenetic landscape. We use high-resolution maps of gibbon-human breaks of synteny (BOS), apply Hi-C in gibbon, measure an array of epigenetic features, and perform cross-species comparisons. We find that gibbon rearrangements occur at TAD boundaries, independent of the parameters used to identify TADs. This overlap is supported by a remarkable genetic and epigenetic similarity between BOS and TAD boundaries, namely presence of CpG islands and SINE elements, and enrichment in CTCF and H3K4me3 binding. Cross-species comparisons reveal that regions orthologous to BOS also correspond with boundaries of large (400-600kb) TADs in human and other mammalian species. The co-localization of rearrangement breakpoints and TAD boundaries may be due to higher chromatin fragility at these locations and/or increased selective pressure against rearrangements that disrupt TAD integrity. We also examine the small portion of BOS that did not overlap with TAD boundaries and gave rise to novel TADs in the gibbon genome. We postulate that these new TADs generally lack deleterious consequences. Lastly, we show that limited epigenetic homogenization occurs across breakpoints, irrespective of their time of occurrence in the gibbon lineage. Overall, our findings demonstrate remarkable conservation of chromatin interactions and epigenetic landscape in gibbons, in spite of extensive genomic shuffling.
Project description:The relationship between evolutionary genome remodeling and the three-dimensional structure of the genome remain largely unexplored. Here we use the heavily rearranged gibbon genome to examine how evolutionary chromosomal rearrangements impact genome-wide chromatin interactions, topologically associating domains (TADs), and their epigenetic landscape. We use high-resolution maps of gibbon-human breaks of synteny (BOS), apply Hi-C in gibbon, measure an array of epigenetic features, and perform cross-species comparisons. We find that gibbon rearrangements occur at TAD boundaries, independent of the parameters used to identify TADs. This overlap is supported by a remarkable genetic and epigenetic similarity between BOS and TAD boundaries, namely presence of CpG islands and SINE elements, and enrichment in CTCF and H3K4me3 binding. Cross-species comparisons reveal that regions orthologous to BOS also correspond with boundaries of large (400-600kb) TADs in human and other mammalian species. The co-localization of rearrangement breakpoints and TAD boundaries may be due to higher chromatin fragility at these locations and/or increased selective pressure against rearrangements that disrupt TAD integrity. We also examine the small portion of BOS that did not overlap with TAD boundaries and gave rise to novel TADs in the gibbon genome. We postulate that these new TADs generally lack deleterious consequences. Lastly, we show that limited epigenetic homogenization occurs across breakpoints, irrespective of their time of occurrence in the gibbon lineage. Overall, our findings demonstrate remarkable conservation of chromatin interactions and epigenetic landscape in gibbons, in spite of extensive genomic shuffling.
Project description:Recent advances enabled by Hi-C technique have unraveled principles of chromosomal folding, which were since linked to many genomic processes. In particular, Hi-C revealed that chromosomes of animals are organized into Topologically Associating Domains (TADs), evolutionary conserved compact chromatin domains that influence gene expression. However, mechanisms that underlie partitioning of the genome into TADs remain poorly understood. To explore principals of TAD folding in Drosophila melanogaster, we performed Hi-C and PolyA+ RNA-seq in four cell lines of various origins (S2, Kc167, DmBG3-c2, and OSC). Contrary to previous studies, we find that regions between TADs (i.e. the inter-TADs and TAD boundaries) in Drosophila are only weakly enriched with the insulator protein dCTCF, while another insulator protein Su(Hw) is preferentially present within TADs. However, Drosophila inter-TADs harbor active chromatin and constitutively transcribed (housekeeping) genes. Accordingly, we find that binding of insulator proteins dCTCF and Su(Hw) predict TAD boundaries much worse than the active chromatin marks (in the minimal case, H3K4me3 and total RNA) do. Moreover, inter-TADs correspond to decompacted interbands of polytene chromosomes, whereas TADs mostly correspond to densely packed bands. Collectively, our results suggest that TADs are condensed chromatin domains depleted in active chromatin marks, separated by regions of active chromatin that cannot be organized into compact structures, possibly due to high levels of histone acetylation. Finally, we test this hypothesis by polymer simulations, and find that TAD partitioning can be explained by different modes of inter-nucleosomal interactions for active and inactive chromatin.
Project description:The spatial arrangement of interphase chromosomes in the nucleus is important for gene expression and genome function in animals and in plants. The recently developed Hi-C technology is an efficacious method to investigate genome packing. Here we present a detailed Hi-C map of the three-dimensional genome organization of the plant Arabidopsis thaliana. We find that local chromatin packing differs from the patterns seen in animals, with kilobasepair-sized segments that have much higher intra-chromosome interaction rates than neighboring regions and which represent a dominant local structural feature of genome conformation in A. thaliana. These regions appear as positive strips on two-dimensional representations of chromatin interaction and they are enriched in epigenetic marks H3K27me3, H3.1 and H3.3. We also identify over 400 insulator-like regions. Furthermore, although topologically associating domains (TADs), which are prominent in animals, are not the dominant feature of A. thaliana genome packing, we found over 1,000 regions that have properties of TAD boundaries, and a similar number of regions similar to the interior of TADs. These insulator-like, TAD-boundary-like, and TAD-interior-like regions show strong enrichment for distinct epigenetic marks, and correlate with gene transcription levels. We conclude that epigenetic modifications, gene density, and transcriptional activity all contribute to shaping the local structure of the A. thaliana nuclear genome.
Project description:Chromatin organization and cell cycle are tightly intertwined in eukaryotes, but the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. We investigated how the retinoblastoma protein (RB), a key cell cycle regulator, influences chromatin architecture. Chromosome conformation capture assays reveal that RB loss increases the number and size of cohesin-dependent loops and strengthens topologically associating domains (TADs). RB shows extensive colocalization with cohesin in the human genome, and it impacts cohesin’s distribution on chromatin. Active RB evicted cohesin from RB-bound TAD boundaries, repressed insulator activity, and enhanced the expression of non-E2F target genes that are important for cell adhesion. We conclude that RB has a central role in the interplay between cell cycle and chromatin organization. This role safeguards chromatin architecture and controls transcription.