Project description:To understand the pathogenic mechanisms of bone erosion in rheumatoid arthritis (RA), we investigated osteoclast-specific epigenetic programs, RANKL-responsive super-enhancers (SEs) and SE-associated enhancer RNAs (SE-eRNAs) in human osteoclasts.
Project description:Bisphosphonates are the mainstay of therapy worldwide for osteoporosis. They inhibit the activities of the osteoclasts, the bone resorption cells. While bisphosphonates are known to block farnesyl pyrophsophate synthase to exert their anti-resorptive action, the detailed mechanism is not well understood. Examining the change in expression profile before and after bisphosphonate treatment in the osteoclasts might shed some light on the biological pathways that are perturbed. Osteoclastic precursor cells were treated with (or without) bisphosphonates (alendronate or risedronate) during their differentiation into mature osteoclasts.
Project description:Loss-of-function mutations in genes coding for subunits of the large, multifarious BRG1/BRM associated factor (BAF) chromatin remodeling complexes are frequently causative for cancer or developmental diseases1-5. Cells lacking the most frequently mutated subunits like the ATPase SMARCA4 typically exhibit drastic chromatin accessibility changes, especially of important regulatory regions6-12. However, so far it remains unknown how these changes are established over time, and whether they are causative for intra-complex synthetic lethalities abrogating the formation (SMARCC1-SMARCC2)8,13,14 or activity (SMARCA4-SMARCA2)15-17 of BAF complexes. Here, we utilize the dTAG system18 to induce acute degradation of BAF subunits in wild-type and BAF mutant backgrounds and analyze the resulting chromatin accessibility changes with high kinetic resolution. We observe that chromatin alterations are established faster than the duration of one cell cycle and that maintaining genome accessibility requires constant ATP-dependent remodeling. Completely abolishing BAF complex function by acute degradation of a synthetic lethal subunit in a paralog-deficient background results in a near-complete loss of chromatin accessibility at BAF-controlled sites, especially at super-enhancers, providing a mechanism for intra-complex synthetic lethalities.
Project description:Chromatin organization is a highly orchestrated process that influences gene expression, in part by modulating access of regulatory factors to DNA and nucleosomes. We found that the chromatin accessibility regulator HMGN1, a target of recurrent DNA copy gains in leukemia, controls myeloid differentiation. HMGN1 amplification was associated with increased accessibility, expression, and histone H3K27 acetylation of loci important for hematopoietic stem cell (HSC) function and AML, such as HoxA cluster genes. In vivo, HMGN1 overexpression was linked to decreased quiescence and increased HSC activity in bone marrow transplantation. HMGN1 overexpression also cooperated with the AML-ETO9a fusion oncoprotein to impair myeloid differentiation and enhance leukemia stem cell (LSC) activity. Inhibition of histone acetyltransferases CBP/p300 relieved the HMGN1-associated differentiation block. These data nominate factors that modulate chromatin accessibility as regulators of HSCs and LSCs and suggest that targeting HMGN1 or its downstream effects on histone acetylation could be therapeutically active in AML.