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To overcome the ethical and technical limitations of in vivo human disease models, the broader scientific community frequently employs model organism-derived cell lines to investigate disease mechanisms, pathways, and therapeutic strategies. Despite the widespread use of certain in vitro models, many still lack contemporary genomic analysis supporting their use as a proxy for the affected human cells and tissues. Consequently, it is imperative to determine how accurately and effectively any proposed biological surrogate may reflect the biological processes it is assumed to model. One such cellular surrogate of human disease is the established mouse neural precursor cell line, SN4741, which has been used to elucidate mechanisms of neurotoxicity in Parkinson disease for over 25 years. Here, we are using a combination of classic and contemporary genomic techniques – karyotyping, RT-qPCR, single cell RNA-seq, bulk RNA-seq, and ATAC-seq – to characterize the transcriptional landscape, chromatin landscape, and genomic architecture of this cell line, and evaluate its suitability as a proxy for midbrain dopaminergic neurons in the study of Parkinson disease. We find that SN4741 cells possess an unstable triploidy and consistently exhibits low expression of dopaminergic neuron markers across assays, even when the cell line is shifted to the non-permissive temperature that drives differentiation. The transcriptional signatures of SN4741 cells suggest that they are maintained in an undifferentiated state at the permissive temperature and differentiate into immature neurons at the non-permissive temperature; however, they may not be dopaminergic neuron precursors, as previously suggested. Additionally, the chromatin landscapes of SN4741 cells, in both the differentiated and undifferentiated states, are not concordant with the open chromatin profiles of ex vivo, mouse E15.5 forebrain- or midbrain-derived dopaminergic neurons. Overall, our data suggest that SN4741 cells may reflect early aspects of neuronal differentiation but are likely not a suitable proxy for dopaminergic neurons as previously thought. The implications of this study extend broadly, illuminating the need for robust biological and genomic rationale underpinning the use of in vitro models of molecular processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The transcription factor SOX10 is essential for all stages of Schwann cell development including myelination. SOX10 cooperates with other transcription factors to activate the expression of key myelin genes in Schwann cells and is therefore a context-dependent, pro-myelination transcription factor. As such, the identification of genes regulated by SOX10 will provide insight into Schwann cell biology and related diseases. While genome-wide studies have successfully revealed SOX10 target genes, these efforts mainly focused on myelinating stages of Schwann cell development. We propose that less-biased approaches will reveal novel functions of SOX10 outside of myelination. Results: We developed a stringent, computational-based screen for genome-wide identification of SOX10 response elements. Experimental validation of a pilot set of predicted binding sites in multiple systems revealed that SOX10 directly regulates a previously unreported alternative promoter at SOX6, which encodes a transcription factor that inhibits glial cell differentiation. We further explored the utility of our computational approach by combining it with DNase-seq analysis in cultured Schwann cells and previously published SOX10 ChIP-seq data from rat sciatic nerve. Remarkably, this analysis enriched for genomic segments that map to loci involved in the negative regulation of gliogenesis including SOX5, SOX6, NOTCH1, HMGA2, HES1, MYCN, ID4, and ID2. Functional studies in Schwann cells revealed that: (1) all eight loci are expressed prior to myelination and down-regulated subsequent to myelination; (2) seven of the eight loci harbor validated SOX10 binding sites; and (3) seven of the eight loci are down-regulated upon repressing SOX10 function. Conclusions: Our computational strategy revealed a putative novel function for SOX10 in Schwann cells, which suggests a model where SOX10 activates the expression of genes that inhibit myelination during non-myelinating stages of Schwann cell development. Importantly, the computational and functional datasets we present here will be valuable for the study of transcriptional regulation, SOX protein function, and glial cell biology [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]