Project description:B cell isotype switching plays an important role in modulating adaptive immune responses. It occurs in response to specific signals that often induce different isotype (I) promoters driving transcription of switch regions, located upstream of the Ig heavy chain (IgH) constant genes. The transcribed switch regions can recombine, leading to a change of the constant gene and, consequently, of antibody isotype. Switch transcription is controlled by the superenhancer 3' regulatory region (3'RR) that establishes long-range chromatin cis-interactions with I promoters. Most stimuli induce more than one I promoter, and switch transcription can occur on both chromosomes. Therefore, it is presently unknown whether induced I promoters compete for the 3'RR on the same chromosome. Here we performed single-chromosome RT-qPCR assays to examine switch transcription monoallelically in the endogenous context. We show that there are two modes of 3'RR-mediated activation of I promoters: coactivation and competition. The nature of the inducing signal plays a pivotal role in determining the mode of activation. Furthermore, we provide evidence that, in its endogenous setting, the 3'RR has a bidirectional activity. We propose that the coactivation and competition modes mediated by the 3'RR may have evolved to cope with the different kinetics of primary immune responses.
Project description:Numerous B-cell lymphomas feature translocations linking oncogenes with the IgH locus and epigenetic drugs such as histone deacetylase inhibitors (HDACi) have been approved to treat some of them. In this study we investigated IgH locus transcription in B-cell splenocytes stimulated with LPS and the HDACi SAHA. B-cell development is spatially and temporally regulated with the 3'RR enhancer of the IgH locus as a conductor. 3'RR is composed of 4 enhancer elements with a palindromic structure of great significance. We investigated the role of this palindrome with KOKI mice where the 30Kb structure of the 3'RR has been deleted of its palindromic structure.