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Over a thousand different transcription factors (TFs) bind with varying occupancy across the human genome. Chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) can assay occupancy genome-wide, but only one TF at a time, limiting our ability to comprehensively observe the TF occupancy landscape, let alone quantify how it changes across conditions. We developed TF occupancy profiler (TOP), a Bayesian hierarchical regression framework, to profile genome-wide quantitative occupancy of numerous TFs using data from a single chromatin accessibility experiment (DNase- or ATAC-seq). TOP is supervised, and its hierarchical structure allows it to predict the occupancy of any sequence-specific TF, even those never assayed with ChIP. We used TOP to profile the quantitative occupancy of hundreds of sequence-specific TFs at sites throughout the genome and examined how their occupancies changed in multiple contexts: in approximately 200 human cell types, through 12 h of exposure to different hormones, and across the genetic backgrounds of 70 individuals. TOP enables cost-effective exploration of quantitative changes in the landscape of TF binding.

Acute trauma stimulates local repair mechanisms but can also impact structures distant from the injury, for example through the activity of circulating factors. To study the responses of remote tissues during tissue regeneration, we profiled transcriptomes of zebrafish brains after experimental cardiac damage. We found that the transcription factor gene cebpd was upregulated remotely in brain ependymal cells as well as kidney tubular cells, in addition to its local induction in epicardial cells. cebpd mutations altered both local and distant cardiac injury responses, altering the cycling of epicardial cells as well as exchange between distant fluid compartments. Genome-wide profiling and transgenesis identified a hormone-responsive enhancer near cebpd that exists in a permissive state, enabling rapid gene expression in heart, brain and kidney after cardiac injury. Deletion of this sequence selectively abolished cebpd induction in remote tissues and disrupted fluid regulation after injury, without affecting its local cardiac expression response. Our findings suggest a model to broaden gene function during regeneration in which enhancer regulatory elements define short- and long-range expression responses to injury.

Colorectal cancer is a leading cause of cancer deaths. Most colorectal cancer patients eventually develop chemoresistance to the current standard-of-care therapies. Here, we used patient-derived colorectal cancer organoids to demonstrate that resistant tumor cells undergo significant chromatin changes in response to oxaliplatin treatment. Integrated transcriptomic and chromatin accessibility analyses using ATAC-Seq and RNA-Seq identified a group of genes associated with significantly increased chromatin accessibility and upregulated gene expression. CRISPR/Cas9 silencing of fibroblast growth factor receptor 1 (FGFR1) and oxytocin receptor (OXTR) helped overcome oxaliplatin resistance. Similarly, treatment with oxaliplatin in combination with an FGFR1 inhibitor (PD166866) or an antagonist of OXTR (L-368,899) suppressed chemoresistant organoids. However, oxaliplatin treatment did not activate either FGFR1 or OXTR expression in another resistant organoid, suggesting that chromatin accessibility changes are patient-specific. The use of patient-derived cancer organoids in combination with transcriptomic and chromatin profiling may lead to precision treatments to overcome chemoresistance in colorectal cancer.

The epicardium is a mesothelial tissue layer that envelops the heart. Cardiac injury activates dynamic gene expression programs in epicardial tissue, which in zebrafish enables subsequent regeneration through paracrine and vascularizing effects. To identify tissue regeneration enhancer elements (TREEs) that control injury-induced epicardial gene expression during heart regeneration, we profiled transcriptomes and chromatin accessibility in epicardial cells purified from regenerating zebrafish hearts. We identified hundreds of candidate TREEs, which are defined by increased chromatin accessibility of non-coding elements near genes with increased expression during regeneration. Several of these candidate TREEs were incorporated into stable transgenic lines, with five out of six elements directing injury-induced epicardial expression but not ontogenetic epicardial expression in larval hearts. Whereas two independent TREEs linked to the gene gnai3 showed similar functional features of gene regulation in transgenic lines, two independent ncam1a-linked TREEs directed distinct spatiotemporal domains of epicardial gene expression. Thus, multiple TREEs linked to a regeneration gene can possess either matching or complementary regulatory controls. Our study provides a new resource and principles for understanding the regulation of epicardial genetic programs during heart regeneration. This article has an associated ‘The people behind the papers’ interview.

Humans carry a much larger percentage of body fat than other primates. Despite the central role of adipose tissue in metabolism, little is known about the evolution of white adipose tissue in primates. Phenotypic divergence is often caused by genetic divergence in cis-regulatory regions. We examined the cis-regulatory landscape of fat during human origins by performing comparative analyses of chromatin accessibility in human and chimpanzee adipose tissue using macaque as an outgroup. We find that many cis-regulatory regions that are specifically closed in humans are under positive selection, located near genes involved with lipid metabolism, and contain a short sequence motif involved in the beigeing of fat, the process in which white adipocytes are transdifferentiated into beige adipocytes. While the primary role of white adipocytes is to store lipids, beige adipocytes are thermogeneic. The collective closing of many putative regulatory regions associated with beiging of fat suggests an adaptive mechanism that increases body fat in humans.

Background In the post-GWAS era, there is an unmet need to decode the underpinning genetic etiologies of late-onset Alzheimer’s disease (LOAD) and translate the associations to causation. Methods We conducted ATAC-seq profiling using NeuN sorted-nuclei from 40 frozen brain tissues to determine LOAD-specific changes in chromatin accessibility landscape in a cell-type specific manner. Results We identified 211 LOAD-specific differential chromatin accessibility sites in neuronal-nuclei, four of which overlapped with LOAD-GWAS regions (±100 kb of SNP). While the non-neuronal nuclei did not show LOAD-specific differences, stratification by sex identified 842 LOAD-specific chromatin accessibility sites in females. Seven of these sex-dependent sites in the non-neuronal samples overlapped LOAD-GWAS regions including APOE. LOAD loci were functionally validated using single-nuclei RNA-seq datasets. Conclusions Using brain sorted-nuclei enabled the identification of sex-dependent cell type-specific LOAD alterations in chromatin structure. These findings enhance the interpretation of LOAD-GWAS discoveries, provide potential pathomechanisms, and suggest novel LOAD-loci. Graphical Abstract

Despite widespread clinical genetic testing, many individuals with suspected genetic conditions lack a precise diagnosis, limiting their opportunity to take advantage of state-of-the-art treatments. In some cases, testing reveals difficult-to-evaluate structural differences, candidate variants that do not fully explain the phenotype, single pathogenic variants in recessive disorders, or no variants in genes of interest. Thus, there is a need for better tools to identify a precise genetic diagnosis in individuals when conventional testing approaches have been exhausted. We performed targeted long-read sequencing (T-LRS) using adaptive sampling on the Oxford Nanopore platform on 40 individuals, 10 of whom lacked a complete molecular diagnosis. We computationally targeted up to 151 Mbp of sequence per individual and searched for pathogenic substitutions, structural variants, and methylation differences using a single data source. We detected all genomic aberrations-including single-nucleotide variants, copy number changes, repeat expansions, and methylation differences-identified by prior clinical testing. In 8/8 individuals with complex structural rearrangements, T-LRS enabled more precise resolution of the mutation, leading to changes in clinical management in one case. In ten individuals with suspected Mendelian conditions lacking a precise genetic diagnosis, T-LRS identified pathogenic or likely pathogenic variants in six and variants of uncertain significance in two others. T-LRS accurately identifies pathogenic structural variants, resolves complex rearrangements, and identifies Mendelian variants not detected by other technologies. T-LRS represents an efficient and cost-effective strategy to evaluate high-priority genes and regions or complex clinical testing results.

Over a thousand different transcription factors (TFs) bind with varying occupancy across the human genome. Chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) can assay occupancy genome-wide, but only one TF at a time, limiting our ability to comprehensively observe the TF occupancy landscape, let alone quantify how it changes across conditions. We developed TOP, a Bayesian hierarchical regression framework, to profile genome-wide quantitative occupancy of numerous TFs using data from a single DNase-seq experiment. TOP is supervised, and its hierarchical structure allows it to predict the occupancy of any sequence-specific TF, even those never assayed with ChIP. We used TOP to profile the quantitative occupancy of nearly 1500 human TF motifs, and examined how their occupancies changed genome-wide in multiple contexts: across 178 cell types, over 12 hours of exposure to different hormones, and across the genetic backgrounds of 70 individuals. TOP enables cost-effective exploration of quantitative changes in the landscape of TF binding.

Cis-regulatory elements (CRE), short DNA sequences through which transcription factors (TFs) exert regulatory control on gene expression, are postulated to be the major sites of causal sequence variation underlying the genetics of complex traits and diseases. We present integrative analyses, combining high-throughput genomic and epigenomic data with sequence-based computations, to identify the causal transcriptional components in a given tissue. We use data on adult human hearts to demonstrate that (1) sequence-based predictions detect numerous, active, tissue-specific CREs missed by experimental observations, (2) learned sequence features identify the cognate TFs, (3) CRE variants are specifically associated with cardiac gene expression, and (4) a significant fraction of the heritability of exemplar cardiac traits (QT interval, blood pressure, pulse rate) is attributable to these variants. This general systems approach can thus identify candidate causal variants and the components of gene regulatory networks (GRN) to enable understanding of the mechanisms of complex disorders on a tissue- or cell-type basis.

Glucocorticoids are potent steroid hormones that regulate immunity and metabolism by activating the transcription factor (TF) activity of glucocorticoid receptor (GR). Previous models have proposed that DNA binding motifs and sites of chromatin accessibility predetermine GR binding and activity. However, there are vast excesses of both features relative to the number of GR binding sites. Thus, these features alone are unlikely to account for the specificity of GR binding and activity. To identify genomic and epigenetic contributions to GR binding specificity and the downstream changes resultant from GR binding, we performed hundreds of genome-wide measurements of TF binding, epigenetic state, and gene expression across a 12-h time course of glucocorticoid exposure. We found that glucocorticoid treatment induces GR to bind to nearly all pre-established enhancers within minutes. However, GR binds to only a small fraction of the set of accessible sites that lack enhancer marks. Once GR is bound to enhancers, a combination of enhancer motif composition and interactions between enhancers then determines the strength and persistence of GR binding, which consequently correlates with dramatic shifts in enhancer activation. Over the course of several hours, highly coordinated changes in TF binding and histone modification occupancy occur specifically within enhancers, and these changes correlate with changes in the expression of nearby genes. Following GR binding, changes in the binding of other TFs precede changes in chromatin accessibility, suggesting that other TFs are also sensitive to genomic features beyond that of accessibility.

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified over 100 risk loci for schizophrenia, but the causal mechanisms remain largely unknown. We performed a transcriptome-wide association study (TWAS) integrating a schizophrenia GWAS of 79,845 individuals from the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium with expression data from brain, blood, and adipose tissues across 3,693 primarily control individuals. We identified 157 TWAS-significant genes, of which 35 did not overlap a known GWAS locus. Of these 157 genes, 42 were associated with specific chromatin features measured in independent samples, thus highlighting potential regulatory targets for follow-up. Suppression of one identified susceptibility gene, mapk3, in zebrafish showed a significant effect on neurodevelopmental phenotypes. Expression and splicing from the brain captured most of the TWAS effect across all genes. This large-scale connection of associations to target genes, tissues, and regulatory features is an essential step in moving toward a mechanistic understanding of GWAS.

Epigenetic effects of environmental chemicals are under intense investigation to fill existing knowledge gaps between environmental/occupational exposures and adverse health outcomes. Chromatin accessibility is one prominent mechanism of epigenetic control of transcription, and understanding of the chemical effects on both could inform the causal role of epigenetic alterations in disease mechanisms. In this study, we hypothesized that baseline variability in chromatin organization and transcription profiles among various tissues and mouse strains influence the outcome of exposure to the DNA damaging chemical 1,3-butadiene. To test this hypothesis, we evaluated DNA damage along with comprehensive quantification of RNA transcripts (RNA-seq), identification of accessible chromatin (ATAC-seq), and characterization of regions with histone modifications associated with active transcription (ChIP-seq for acetylation at histone 3 lysine 27, H3K27ac). We collected these data in the lung, liver, and kidney of mice from two genetically divergent strains, C57BL/6J and CAST/EiJ, that were exposed to clean air or to 1,3-butadiene (~600 ppm) for 2 weeks. We found that tissue effects dominate differences in both gene expression and chromatin states, followed by strain effects. At baseline, xenobiotic metabolism was consistently more active in CAST/EiJ, while immune system pathways were more active in C57BL/6J across tissues. Surprisingly, even though all three tissues in both strains harbored butadiene-induced DNA damage, little transcriptional effect of butadiene was observed in liver and kidney. Toxicologically relevant effects of butadiene in the lung were on the pathways of xenobiotic metabolism and inflammation. We also found that variability in chromatin accessibility across individuals (i.e., strains) only partially explains the variability in transcription. This study showed that variation in the basal states of epigenome and transcriptome may be useful indicators for individuals or tissues susceptible to genotoxic environmental chemicals.

Large genome-mapping consortia and thousands of genome-wide association studies have identified non-protein-coding elements in the genome as having a central role in various biological processes. However, decoding the functions of the millions of putative regulatory elements discovered in these studies remains challenging. CRISPR-Cas9-based epigenome editing technologies have enabled precise perturbation of the activity of specific regulatory elements. Here we describe CRISPR-Cas9-based epigenomic regulatory element screening (CERES) for improved high-throughput screening of regulatory element activity in the native genomic context. Using dCas9KRAB repressor and dCas9p300 activator constructs and lentiviral single guide RNA libraries to target DNase I hypersensitive sites surrounding a gene of interest, we carried out both loss- and gain-of-function screens to identify regulatory elements for the β-globin and HER2 loci in human cells. CERES readily identified known and previously unidentified regulatory elements, some of which were dependent on cell type or direction of perturbation. This technology allows the high-throughput functional annotation of putative regulatory elements in their native chromosomal context.

Gene transcription profiles across tissues are largely defined by the activity of regulatory elements, most of which correspond to regions of accessible chromatin. Regulatory element activity is in turn modulated by genetic variation, resulting in variable transcription rates across individuals. The interplay of these factors, however, is poorly understood. Here we characterize expression and chromatin state dynamics across three tissues—liver, lung, and kidney—in 47 strains of the Collaborative Cross (CC) mouse population, examining the regulation of these dynamics by expression quantitative trait loci (eQTL) and chromatin QTL (cQTL). QTL whose allelic effects were consistent across tissues were detected for 1,101 genes and 133 chromatin regions. Also detected were eQTL and cQTL whose allelic effects differed across tissues, including local-eQTL for Pik3c2g detected in all three tissues but with distinct allelic effects. Leveraging overlapping measurements of gene expression and chromatin accessibility on the same mice from multiple tissues, we used mediation analysis to identify chromatin and gene expression intermediates of eQTL effects. Based on QTL and mediation analyses over multiple tissues, we propose a causal model for the distal genetic regulation of Akr1e1, a gene involved in glycogen metabolism, through the zinc finger transcription factor Zfp985 and chromatin intermediates. This analysis demonstrates the complexity of transcriptional and chromatin dynamics and their regulation over multiple tissues, as well as the value of the CC and related genetic resource populations for identifying specific regulatory mechanisms within cells and tissues., Author summary Genetic variation can drive alterations in gene expression levels and chromatin accessibility, the latter of which defines gene regulatory elements genome-wide. The same genetic variants may associate with both molecular events, and these may be connected within the same causal path: a variant that reduces promoter region chromatin accessibility, potentially by affecting transcription factor binding, may lead to reduced expression of that gene. Moreover, these causal regulatory paths can differ between tissues depending on functions and cellular activity specific to each tissue. We identify cross-tissue and tissue-selective genetic regulators of gene expression and chromatin accessibility in liver, lung, and kidney tissues using a panel of genetically diverse inbred mouse strains. Further, we identify a number of candidate causal mediators of the genetic regulation of gene expression, including a zinc finger protein that helps silence the Akr1e1 gene. Our analyses are consistent with chromatin accessibility playing a role in the regulation of transcription. Our study demonstrates the power of genetically diverse, multi-parental mouse populations, such as the Collaborative Cross, for large-scale studies of genetic drivers of gene regulation that underlie complex phenotypes, as well as identifying causal intermediates that drive variable activity of specific genes and pathways.

Changes in transcriptional regulation are thought to be a major contributor to the evolution of phenotypic traits, but the contribution of changes in chromatin accessibility to the evolution of gene expression remains almost entirely unknown. To address this important gap in knowledge, we developed a new method to identify DNase I Hypersensitive (DHS) sites with differential chromatin accessibility between species using a joint modeling approach. Our method overcomes several limitations inherent to conventional threshold-based pairwise comparisons that become increasingly apparent as the number of species analyzed rises. Our approach employs a single quantitative test which is more sensitive than existing pairwise methods. To illustrate, we applied our joint approach to DHS sites in fibroblast cells from five primates (human, chimpanzee, gorilla, orangutan, and rhesus macaque). We identified 89,744 DHS sites, of which 41% are identified as differential between species using the joint model compared with 33% using the conventional pairwise approach. The joint model provides a principled approach to distinguishing single from multiple chromatin accessibility changes among species. We found that nondifferential DHS sites are enriched for nucleotide conservation. Differential DHS sites with decreased chromatin accessibility relative to rhesus macaque occur more commonly near transcription start sites (TSS), while those with increased chromatin accessibility occur more commonly distal to TSS. Further, differential DHS sites near TSS are less cell type-specific than more distal regulatory elements. Taken together, these results point to distinct classes of DHS sites, each with distinct characteristics of selection, genomic location, and cell type specificity.

Changes in transcriptional regulation are thought to be a major contributor to the evolution of phenotypic traits, but the contribution of changes in chromatin accessibility to the evolution of gene expression remains almost entirely unknown. To address this important gap in knowledge, we developed a new method to identify DNase I Hypersensitive (DHS) sites with differential chromatin accessibility between species using a joint modeling approach. Our method overcomes several limitations inherent to conventional threshold-based pairwise comparisons that become increasingly apparent as the number of species analyzed rises. Our approach employs a single quantitative test which is more sensitive than existing pairwise methods. To illustrate, we applied our joint approach to DHS sites in fibroblast cells from five primates (human, chimpanzee, gorilla, orangutan, and rhesus macaque). We identified 89,744 DHS sites, of which 41% are identified as differential between species using the joint model compared with 33% using the conventional pairwise approach. The joint model provides a principled approach to distinguishing single from multiple chromatin accessibility changes among species. We found that non differential DHS sites are enriched for nucleotide conservation. Differential DHS sites with decreased chromatin accessibility relative to rhesus macaque occur more commonly near transcription start sites (TSS), while those with increased chromatin accessibility occur more commonly distal to TSS. Further, differential DHS sites near TSS are less cell type-specific than more distal regulatory elements. Taken together, these results point to distinct classes of DHS sites, each with distinct characteristics of selection, genomic location, and cell type specificity.

INTRODUCTION The human cerebral cortex has undergone an extraordinary increase in size and complexity during mammalian evolution. Cortical cell lineages are specified in the embryo, and genetic and epidemiological evidence implicates early cortical development in the etiology of neuropsychiatric disorders such as autism spectrum disorder (ASD), intellectual disabilities, and schizophrenia. Most of the disease-implicated genomic variants are located outside of genes, and the interpretation of noncoding mutations is lagging behind owing to limited annotation of functional elements in the noncoding genome. RATIONALE We set out to discover gene-regulatory elements and chart their dynamic activity during prenatal human cortical development, focusing on enhancers, which carry most of the weight upon regulation of gene expression. We longitudinally modeled human brain development using human induced pluripotent stem cell (hiPSC)–derived cortical organoids and compared organoids to isogenic fetal brain tissue. RESULTS Fetal fibroblast–derived hiPSC lines were used to generate cortically patterned organoids and to compare oganoids’ epigenome and transcriptome to that of isogenic fetal brains and external datasets. Organoids model cortical development between 5 and 16 postconception weeks, thus enabling us to study transitions from cortical stem cells to progenitors to early neurons. The greatest changes occur at the transition from stem cells to progenitors. The regulatory landscape encompasses a total set of 96,375 enhancers linked to target genes, with 49,640 enhancers being active in organoids but not in mid-fetal brain, suggesting major roles in cortical neuron specification. Enhancers that gained activity in the human lineage are active in the earliest stages of organoid development, when they target genes that regulate the growth of radial glial cells. Parallel weighted gene coexpression network analysis (WGCNA) of transcriptome and enhancer activities defined a number of modules of coexpressed genes and coactive enhancers, following just six and four global temporal patterns that we refer to as supermodules, likely reflecting fundamental programs in embryonic and fetal brain. Correlations between gene expression and enhancer activity allowed stratifying enhancers into two categories: activating regulators (A-regs) and repressive regulators (R-regs). Several enhancer modules converged with gene modules, suggesting that coexpressed genes are regulated by enhancers with correlated patterns of activity. Furthermore, enhancers active in organoids and fetal brains were enriched for ASD de novo variants that disrupt binding sites of homeodomain, Hes1, NR4A2, Sox3, and NFIX transcription factors. CONCLUSION We validated hiPSC-derived cortical organoids as a suitable model system for studying gene regulation in human embryonic brain development, evolution, and disease. Our results suggest that organoids may reveal how noncoding mutations contribute to ASD etiology. Summary of the study, analyses, and main results. Data were generated for iPSC-derived human telencephalic organoids and isogenic fetal cortex. Organoids modeled embryonic and early fetal cortex and show a larger repertoire of enhancers. Enhancers could be divided into activators and repressors of gene expression. We derived networks of modules and supermodules with correlated gene and enhancer activities, some of which were implicated in autism spectrum disorders (ASD).

Humans experience higher rates of age-associated diseases than our closest living evolutionary relatives, chimpanzees. Environmental factors can explain many of these increases in disease risk, but species-specific genetic changes can also play a role. Alleles that confer increased disease susceptibility later in life can persist in a population in the absence of selective pressure if those changes confer positive adaptation early in life. One age-associated disease that disproportionately affects humans compared with chimpanzees is epithelial cancer. Here, we explored genetic differences between humans and chimpanzees in a well-defined experimental assay that mimics gene expression changes that happen during cancer progression: A fibroblast serum challenge. We used this assay with fibroblasts isolated from humans and chimpanzees to explore species-specific differences in gene expression and chromatin state with RNA-Seq and DNase-Seq. Our data reveal that human fibroblasts increase expression of genes associated with wound healing and cancer pathways; in contrast, chimpanzee gene expression changes are not concentrated around particular functional categories. Chromatin accessibility dramatically increases in human fibroblasts, yet decreases in chimpanzee cells during the serum response. Many regions of opening and closing chromatin are in close proximity to genes encoding transcription factors or genes involved in wound healing processes, further supporting the link between changes in activity of regulatory elements and changes in gene expression. Together, these expression and open chromatin data show that humans and chimpanzees have dramatically different responses to the same physiological stressor, and how a core physiological process can evolve quickly over relatively short evolutionary time scales.

Higher order chromatin structure establishes domains that organize the genome and coordinate gene expression. However, the molecular mechanisms controlling transcription of individual loci within a topological domain (TAD) are not fully understood. The cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR) gene provides a paradigm for investigating these mechanisms. CFTR occupies a TAD bordered by CTCF/cohesin binding sites within which are cell-type-selective cis-regulatory elements for the locus. We showed previously that intronic and extragenic enhancers, when occupied by specific transcription factors, are recruited to the CFTR promoter by a looping mechanism to drive gene expression. Here we use a combination of CRISPR/Cas9 editing of cis-regulatory elements and siRNA-mediated depletion of architectural proteins to determine the relative contribution of structural elements and enhancers to the higher order structure and expression of the CFTR locus. We found the boundaries of the CFTR TAD are conserved among diverse cell types and are dependent on CTCF and cohesin complex. Removal of an upstream CTCF-binding insulator alters the interaction profile, but has little effect on CFTR expression. Within the TAD, intronic enhancers recruit cell-type selective transcription factors and deletion of a pivotal enhancer element dramatically decreases CFTR expression, but has minor effect on its 3D structure.

Genome engineering technologies based on the CRISPR/Cas9 and TALE systems are enabling new approaches in science and biotechnology. However, the specificity of these tools in complex genomes and the role of chromatin structure in determining DNA binding are not well understood. We analyzed the genome-wide effects of TALE- and CRISPR-based transcriptional activators in human cells using ChIP-seq to assess DNA-binding specificity and RNA-seq to measure the specificity of perturbing the transcriptome. Additionally, DNase-seq was used to assess genome-wide chromatin remodeling that occurs as a result of their action. Our results show that these transcription factors are highly specific in both DNA binding and gene regulation and are able to open targeted regions of closed chromatin independent of gene activation. Collectively, these results underscore the potential for these technologies to make precise changes to gene expression for gene and cell therapies or fundamental studies of gene function.

To identify chromatin mechanisms of neuronal differentiation, we characterized chromatin accessibility and gene expression in cerebellar granule neurons (CGNs) of the developing mouse. We used DNase-seq to map accessibility of cis-regulatory elements and RNA-seq to profile transcript abundance across postnatal stages of neuronal differentiation in vivo and in culture. We observed thousands of chromatin accessibility changes as CGNs differentiated, and verified, using H3K27ac ChIP-seq, reporter gene assays and CRISPR-mediated activation, that many of these regions function as neuronal enhancers. Motif discovery in differentially accessible chromatin regions suggested a previously unknown role for the Zic family of transcription factors in CGN maturation. We confirmed the association of Zic with these elements by ChIP-seq and found, using knockdown, that Zic1 and Zic2 are required for coordinating mature neuronal gene expression patterns. Together, our data reveal chromatin dynamics at thousands of gene regulatory elements that facilitate the gene expression patterns necessary for neuronal differentiation and function.

Schizophrenia genome-wide association (GWA) studies have identified over 150 regions of the genome that are associated with disease risk, yet there is little evidence that coding mutations contribute to this disorder. To explore the mechanism of non-coding regulatory elements in schizophrenia, we performed ATAC-seq on adult prefrontal cortex brain samples from 135 individuals with schizophrenia and 137 controls, and identified 118,152 ATAC-seq peaks. These accessible chromatin regions in brain are highly enriched for SNP-heritability for schizophrenia (10.6 fold enrichment, P=2.4×10−4, second only to genomic regions conserved in Eutherian mammals) and replicated in an independent dataset (9.0 fold enrichment, P=2.7×10−4). This degree of enrichment of schizophrenia heritability was higher than in open chromatin found in 138 different cell and tissue types. Brain open chromatin regions that overlapped highly conserved regions exhibited an even higher degree of heritability enrichment, indicating that conservation can identify functional subsets within regulatory elements active in brain. However, we did not identify chromatin accessibility differences between schizophrenia cases and controls, nor did we find an interaction of chromatin QTLs with case-control status. This indicates that although causal variants map within regulatory elements, mechanisms other than differential chromatin may govern the contribution of regulatory element variation to schizophrenia risk. Our results strongly implicate gene regulatory processes involving open chromatin in the pathogenesis of schizophrenia, and suggest a strategy to understand the hundreds of common variants emerging from large genomic studies of complex brain diseases.

Background: The damaging effects of exposure to environmental toxicants differentially affect genetically distinct individuals, but the mechanisms contributing to these differences are poorly understood. Genetic variation affects the establishment of the gene regulatory landscape and thus gene expression, and we hypothesized that this contributes to the observed heterogeneity in individual responses to exogenous cellular insults. Objectives: We performed an in vivo study of how genetic variation and chromatin organization may dictate susceptibility to DNA damage, and influence the cellular response to such damage, caused by an environmental toxicant. Materials and Methods: We measured DNA damage, messenger RNA (mRNA) and microRNA (miRNA) expression, and genome-wide chromatin accessibility in lung tissue from two genetically divergent inbred mouse strains, C57BL/6J and CAST/EiJ, both in unexposed mice and in mice exposed to a model DNA-damaging chemical, 1,3-butadiene. Results: Our results showed that unexposed CAST/EiJ and C57BL/6J mice have very different chromatin organization and transcription profiles in the lung. Importantly, in unexposed CAST/EiJ mice, which acquired relatively less 1,3-butadiene-induced DNA damage, we observed increased transcription and a more accessible chromatin landscape around genes involved in detoxification pathways. Upon chemical exposure, chromatin was significantly remodeled in the lung of C57BL/6J mice, a strain that acquired higher levels of 1,3-butadiene–induced DNA damage, around the same genes, ultimately resembling the molecular profile of CAST/EiJ. Conclusions: These results suggest that strain-specific changes in chromatin and transcription in response to chemical exposure lead to a “compensation” for underlying genetic-driven interindividual differences in the baseline chromatin and transcriptional state. This work represents an example of how chemical and environmental exposures can be evaluated to better understand gene-by-environment interactions, and it demonstrates the important role of chromatin response in transcriptomic changes and, potentially, in deleterious effects of exposure. https://doi.org/10.1289/EHP1937

Regulatory elements recruit transcription factors that modulate gene expression distinctly across cell types, but the relationships among these remains elusive. To address this, we analyzed matched DNase-seq and gene expression data for 112 human samples representing 72 cell types. We first defined more than 1800 clusters of DNase I hypersensitive sites (DHSs) with similar tissue specificity of DNase-seq signal patterns. We then used these to uncover distinct associations between DHSs and promoters, CpG islands, conserved elements, and transcription factor motif enrichment. Motif analysis within clusters identified known and novel motifs in cell-type-specific and ubiquitous regulatory elements and supports a role for AP-1 regulating open chromatin. We developed a classifier that accurately predicts cell-type lineage based on only 43 DHSs and evaluated the tissue of origin for cancer cell types. A similar classifier identified three sex-specific loci on the X chromosome, including the XIST lincRNA locus. By correlating DNase I signal and gene expression, we predicted regulated genes for more than 500K DHSs. Finally, we introduce a web resource to enable researchers to use these results to explore these regulatory patterns and better understand how expression is modulated within and across human cell types.

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified over 100 risk loci for schizophrenia, but the causal mechanisms remain largely unknown. We performed a transcriptome-wide association study (TWAS) integrating expression data from brain, blood, and adipose tissues across 3,693 individuals with schizophrenia GWAS of 79,845 individuals from the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium. We identified 157 genes with a transcriptome-wide significant association, of which 35 did not overlap a known GWAS locus; the largest number involved alternative splicing in brain. 42/157 genes were also associated to specific chromatin phenotypes measured in 121 independent samples (a 4-fold enrichment over background genes). This high-throughput connection of GWAS findings to specific genes, tissues, and regulatory mechanisms is an essential step toward understanding the biology of schizophrenia and moving towards therapeutic interventions.

DNase I hypersensitive sites (DHSs) are markers of regulatory DNA and have underpinned the discovery of all classes of cis-regulatory elements including enhancers, promoters, insulators, silencers and locus control regions. Here we present the first extensive map of human DHSs identified through genome-wide profiling in 125 diverse cell and tissue types. We identify ∼2.9 million DHSs that encompass virtually all known experimentally validated cis-regulatory sequences and expose a vast trove of novel elements, most with highly cell-selective regulation. Annotating these elements using ENCODE data reveals novel relationships between chromatin accessibility, transcription, DNA methylation and regulatory factor occupancy patterns. We connect ∼580,000 distal DHSs with their target promoters, revealing systematic pairing of different classes of distal DHSs and specific promoter types. Patterning of chromatin accessibility at many regulatory regions is organized with dozens to hundreds of co-activated elements, and the transcellular DNase I sensitivity pattern at a given region can predict cell-type-specific functional behaviours. The DHS landscape shows signatures of recent functional evolutionary constraint. However, the DHS compartment in pluripotent and immortalized cells exhibits higher mutation rates than that in highly differentiated cells, exposing an unexpected link between chromatin accessibility, proliferative potential and patterns of human variation. An extensive map of human DNase I hypersensitive sites, markers of regulatory DNA, in 125 diverse cell and tissue types is described; integration of this information with other ENCODE-generated data sets identifies new relationships between chromatin accessibility, transcription, DNA methylation and regulatory factor occupancy patterns. This paper describes the first extensive map of human DNaseI hypersensitive sites — markers of regulatory DNA — in 125 diverse cell and tissue types. Integration of this information with other data sets generated by ENCODE (Encyclopedia of DNA Elements) identified new relationships between chromatin accessibility, transcription, DNA methylation and regulatory-factor occupancy patterns. Evolutionary-conservation analysis revealed signatures of recent functional constraint within DNaseI hypersensitive sites.

Extended heterochromatin domains, which are repressive to transcription and help define centromeres and telomeres, are formed through specific interactions between silencing proteins and nucleosomes. This study reveals that in Saccharomyces cerevisiae, the same nucleosomal surface is critical for the formation of multiple types of heterochromatin, but not for local repression mediated by a related transcriptional repressor. Thus, this region of the nucleosome may be generally important to long-range silencing. In S. cerevisiae, the Sir proteins perform long-range silencing, whereas the Sum1 complex acts locally to repress specific genes. A mutant form of Sum1p, Sum1-1p, achieves silencing in the absence of Sir proteins. A genetic screen identified mutations in histones H3 and H4 that disrupt Sum1-1 silencing and fall in regions of the nucleosome previously known to disrupt Sir silencing and rDNA silencing. In contrast, no mutations were identified that disrupt wild-type Sum1 repression. Mutations that disrupt silencing fall in two regions of the nucleosome, the tip of the H3 tail and a surface of the nucleosomal core (LRS domain) and the adjacent base of the H4 tail. The LRS/H4 tail region interacts with the Sir3p bromo-adjacent homology (BAH) domain to facilitate Sir silencing. By analogy, this study is consistent with the LRS/H4 tail region interacting with Orc1p, a paralog of Sir3p, to facilitate Sum1-1 silencing. Thus, the LRS/H4 tail region of the nucleosome may be relatively accessible and facilitate interactions between silencing proteins and nucleosomes to stabilize long-range silencing.

The glucocorticoid receptor (GR) is a hormone-inducible transcription factor involved in metabolic and anti-inflammatory gene expression responses. To investigate what controls interactions between GR binding sites and their target genes, we used in situ Hi-C to generate high-resolution, genome-wide maps of chromatin interactions before and after glucocorticoid treatment. We found that GR binding to the genome typically does not cause new chromatin interactions to target genes but instead acts through chromatin interactions that already exist prior to hormone treatment. Both glucocorticoid-induced and glucocorticoid-repressed genes increased interactions with distal GR binding sites. In addition, while glucocorticoid-induced genes increased interactions with transcriptionally active chromosome compartments, glucocorticoid-repressed genes increased interactions with transcriptionally silent compartments. Lastly, while the architectural DNA-binding proteins CTCF and RAD21 were bound to most chromatin interactions, we found that glucocorticoid-responsive chromatin interactions were depleted for CTCF binding but enriched for RAD21. Together, these findings offer new insights into the mechanisms underlying GC-mediated gene activation and repression.

SOX10 is required for melanocyte development and maintenance, and has been linked to melanoma initiation and progression. However, the molecular mechanisms by which SOX10 guides the appropriate gene expression programs necessary to promote the melanocyte lineage are not fully understood. Here we employ genetic and epigenomic analysis approaches to uncover novel genomic targets and previously unappreciated molecular roles of SOX10 in melanocytes. Through global analysis of SOX10-binding sites and epigenetic characteristics of chromatin states, we uncover an extensive catalog of SOX10 targets genome-wide. Our findings reveal that SOX10 predominantly engages ‘open’ chromatin regions and binds to distal regulatory elements, including novel and previously known melanocyte enhancers. Integrated chromatin occupancy and transcriptome analysis suggest a role for SOX10 in both transcriptional activation and repression to regulate functionally distinct classes of genes. We demonstrate that distinct epigenetic signatures and cis-regulatory sequence motifs predicted to bind putative co-regulatory transcription factors define SOX10-activated and SOX10-repressed target genes. Collectively, these findings uncover a central role of SOX10 as a global regulator of gene expression in the melanocyte lineage by targeting diverse regulatory pathways.

Epigenome editing with the CRISPR (clustered, regularly interspaced, short palindromic repeats)-Cas9 platform is a promising technology for modulating gene expression to direct cell phenotype and to dissect the causal epigenetic mechanisms of gene regulation. Fusions of nuclease-inactive dCas9 to the Kruppel-associated box (KRAB) repressor (dCas9-KRAB) can silence target gene expression, but the genome-wide specificity and the extent of heterochromatin formation catalyzed by dCas9-KRAB are not known. We targeted dCas9-KRAB to the HS2 enhancer, a distal regulatory element that orchestrates the expression of multiple globin genes, and observed highly specific induction of H3K9 trimethylation (H3K9me3) at the enhancer and decreased chromatin accessibility of both the enhancer and its promoter targets. Targeted epigenetic modification of HS2 silenced the expression of multiple globin genes, with minimal off-target changes in global gene expression. These results demonstrate that repression mediated by dCas9-KRAB is sufficiently specific to disrupt the activity of individual enhancers via local modification of the epigenome.

Exfoliation syndrome (XFS) is a common, age-related, systemic fibrillinopathy. It greatly increases risk of exfoliation glaucoma (XFG), a major worldwide cause of irreversible blindness. Coding variants in the lysyl oxidase-like 1 (LOXL1) gene are strongly associated with XFS in all studied populations, but a functional role for these variants has not been established. To identify additional candidate functional variants, we sequenced the entire LOXL1 genomic locus (∼40 kb) in 50 indigenous, black South African XFS cases and 50 matched controls. The variants with the strongest evidence of association were located in a well-defined 7-kb region bounded by the 3'-end of exon 1 and the adjacent region of intron 1 of LOXL1. We replicated this finding in US Caucasian (91 cases/1031 controls), German (771 cases/1365 controls) and Japanese (1484 cases/1188 controls) populations. The region of peak association lies upstream of LOXL1-AS1, a long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) encoded on the opposite strand of LOXL1. We show that this region contains a promoter and, importantly, that the strongly associated XFS risk alleles in the South African population are functional variants that significantly modulate the activity of this promoter. LOXL1-AS1 expression is also significantly altered in response to oxidative stress in human lens epithelial cells and in response to cyclic mechanical stress in human Schlemm's canal endothelial cells. Taken together, these findings support a functional role for the LOXL1-AS1 lncRNA in cellular stress response and suggest that dysregulation of its expression by genetic risk variants plays a key role in XFS pathogenesis.

Cdc25 phosphatases are key activators of the eukaryotic cell cycle and compelling anticancer targets because their overexpression has been associated with numerous cancers. However, drug discovery targeting these phosphatases has been hampered by the lack of structural information about how Cdc25s interact with their native protein substrates, the cyclin-dependent kinases. Herein, we predict a docked orientation for Cdc25B with its Cdk2-pTpY-CycA protein substrate by a rigid-body docking method and refine the docked models with full-scale molecular dynamics simulations and minimization. We validate the stable ensemble structure experimentally by a variety of in vitro and in vivo techniques. Specifically, we compare our model with a crystal structure of the substrate-trapping mutant of Cdc25B. We identify and validate in vivo a novel hot-spot residue on Cdc25B (Arg492) that plays a central role in protein substrate recognition. We identify a hot-spot residue on the substrate Cdk2 (Asp206) and confirm its interaction with hot-spot residues on Cdc25 using hot-spot swapping and double mutant cycles to derive interaction energies. Our experimentally validated model is consistent with previous studies of Cdk2 and its interaction partners and initiates the opportunity for drug discovery of inhibitors that target the remote binding sites of this protein-protein interaction.

Cdc25B is a phosphatase that catalyzes the dephosphorylation and activation of the cyclin-dependent kinases, thus driving cell cycle progression. We have identified two residues, R488 and Y497, located >20 Å from the active site, that mediate protein substrate recognition without affecting activity toward small-molecule substrates. Injection of Cdc25B wild-type but not the R488L or Y497A variants induces germinal vesicle breakdown and cyclin-dependent kinase activation in Xenopus oocytes. The conditional knockout of the cdc25 homolog ( mih1 ) in Saccharomyces cerevisiae can be complemented by the wild type but not by the hot spot variants, indicating that protein substrate recognition by the Cdc25 phosphatases is an essential and evolutionarily conserved feature.

The CRISPR/Cas9 genome engineering platform has emerged as a powerful tool for gene regulation. Catalytically inactivated, “dead” Cas9 (dCas9) can be fused to a variety of transcriptional modulators to activate or silence gene expression. The KRAB domain, a common heterochromatin-forming motif in naturally occurring zinc finger transcription factors, has been genetically linked to dCas9 to create an RNA-guided synthetic repressor. KRAB-based synthetic repressors can effectively silence the expression of single genes and have been used to repress oncogenes, inhibit viral replication, and treat dominant negative diseases. However, the specificity of silencing endogenous genes and the distance of heterochromatin formation catalyzed by dCas9-KRAB repressors have not been studied. Understanding the precision of dCas9-KRAB repressors is critical to their further therapeutic application. As a model system to investigate the epigenetic consequences of KRAB-based silencing, dCas9-KRAB was targeted to the HS2 enhancer of the globin locus in the K562 human erythroid leukemia cell line. Enhancers are regulatory elements characterized by open chromatin that can activate distal genes targets. Genetic variation in enhancer sequences has been linked to many disease states, including cancer and cardiovascular disease. The HS2 enhancer is a potent activator of the developmentally regulated globin genes, which are involved in sickle cell anemia and beta thalassemia. We demonstrated that dCas9-KRAB targeted to HS2 by a single guide RNA (sgRNA) can disrupt the expression of multiple downstream globin genes. These findings expand the capabilities of synthetic repressors by showing that dCas9-KRAB targeted to a distal regulatory element can silence expression of multiple genes located 10 to 50 kb away. Genome-wide analysis of DNA-binding and mRNA expression by ChIP-seq and RNA-seq, respectively, established that RNA-guided synthetic repressors were highly specific for targeting and silencing the globin genes. To further investigate the utility of dCas9-KRAB repressors as a targeted epigenetic modifier, we performed ChIP-seq for tri-methylation of H3K9, a mark of heterochromatin, and DNase I hypersensitivity-sequencing (DNase-seq), a genome-wide measure of chromatin accessibility. dCas9-KRAB repressors induced H3K9 methylation at the HS2 enhancer. Off-target H3K9 methylation events were minimal and generally depended on the sgRNA. Reduced DNase I hypersensitivity was also observed at the enhancer region and its promoter targets, indicating that dCas9-KRAB repressors can modulate the chromatin structure of active enhancers to affect the activity of downstream target genes. These studies establish that dCas9-KRAB repressors can interfere with distal enhancer activity by highly specific remodeling of the epigenetic state of targeted loci. Enhancers play critical roles in differentiation, development, and disease, and understanding the epigenetic implications of targeting engineered repressors to distal regulatory elements will inform further use of genome engineering technologies for therapeutic applications.

The glucocorticoid receptor (GR) binds the human genome at >10,000 sites, but only regulates the expression of hundreds of genes. To determine the functional effect of each site, we measured the glucocorticoid (GC) responsive activity of nearly all GR binding sites (GBSs) captured using chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) in A549 cells. 13% of GBSs assayed had GC-induced activity. The responsive sites were defined by direct GR binding via a GC response element (GRE) and exclusively increased reporter-gene expression. Meanwhile, most GBSs lacked GC-induced reporter activity. The non-responsive sites had epigenetic features of steady state enhancers and clustered around direct GBSs. Together, our data support a model in which clusters of GBSs observed with ChIP-seq reflect interactions between direct and tethered GBSs over tens of kilobases. We further show that those interactions can synergistically modulate the activity of direct GBSs, and may therefore play a major role in driving gene activation in response to GCs.

Most human transcription factors bind a small subset of potential genomic sites and often use different subsets in different cell types. To identify mechanisms that govern cell-type-specific transcription factor binding, we used an integrative approach to study estrogen receptor α (ER). We found that ER exhibits two distinct modes of binding. Shared sites, bound in multiple cell types, are characterized by high-affinity estrogen response elements (EREs), inaccessible chromatin, and a lack of DNA methylation, while cell-specific sites are characterized by a lack of EREs, co-occurrence with other transcription factors, and cell-type-specific chromatin accessibility and DNA methylation. These observations enabled accurate quantitative models of ER binding that suggest tethering of ER to one-third of cell-specific sites. The distinct properties of cell-specific binding were also observed with glucocorticoid receptor and for ER in primary mouse tissues, representing an elegant genomic encoding scheme for generating cell-type-specific gene regulation.

The SUM1-1 mutation is an example of a single amino acid change that results in new function. Wild-type Sum1p in Saccharomyces cerevisiae is a DNA-binding repressor that acts locally, whereas mutant Sum1-1p forms an extended repressive chromatin structure. By characterizing a panel of mutations in which various amino acids replaced the critical residue, threonine 988, we found that threonine was required for wild-type function and that in the absence of threonine the association of Sum1p with DNA was reduced. Isoleucine, the amino acid in mutant Sum1-1p, was required for the novel spreading property. Thus, the SUM1-1 mutation results in both a loss and a gain of function. The presence of isoleucine caused Sum1-1p to self-associate, a property that may promote spreading. In addition, isoleucine enabled Sum1-1p to associate with the origin recognition complex (ORC) and accumulate near ORC binding sites. Thus, both threonine and isoleucine at position 988 enable Sum1p to form intermolecular interactions. We propose that interaction domains may be hotspots for gain-of-function mutations because alterations in such domains have the potential to redirect a protein to new sets of binding partners. In addition, self-association of chromatin proteins may promote the formation of extended chromatin structures.

Myt1 is a dual-specificity kinase that contributes to the regulation of the cell cycle by adding inhibitory phosphates to the cyclin-dependent kinases (Cdk/cyclins). Myt1 is found to be phosphorylated and less active in M-phase compared to interphase. Although Myt1 can be phosphorylated by several different kinases in vitro, it is not well understood how Myt1 is regulated in vivo. Additionally, the interplay between phosphorylation by other kinases and autophosphorylation has not been investigated. Since phosphorylation is an important mode of regulation for Myt1, we have investigated the properties and physiological significance of the autophosphorylation of Myt1 from Xenopus laevis (XMyt1). Using MALDI mass spectrometry we have identified Ser66 and Ser76 as autophosphorylation sites. Autophosphorylation is important for the activity of XMyt1 in intact cells, as found by comparing the timing of the cell cycle in Xenopus oocytes expressing either exogenous wild type XMyt1 or its autophosphorylation site mutants. Specifically, S66A is significantly more potent than wild type XMyt1 at delaying entry into meiosis and concomitantly is hypophosphorylated as evident by a loss of mobility shift. However, this cannot be accounted for by a simple increase in kinase activity towards Cdk/cyclins in vitro. We therefore propose that Myt1 catalyzed autophosphorylation of residue S66 is a prerequisite and/or trigger for the further phosphorylation and inactivation of Myt1. Thus autophosphorylation of Myt1 is a novel inhibitory mechanism that adds another layer of complexity to the phosphorylation-dependent mechanism of Myt1 regulation.

In this work, we report the implication of the pleckstrin homology (PH) domain-containing protein CKIP-1 in phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3-K)-regulated muscle differentiation. CKIP-1 is upregulated during muscle differentiation in C2C12 cells. We show that CKIP-1 binds to phosphatidylinositol 3-phosphate through its PH domain and localizes to the plasma membrane in a PI3-K-dependent manner. Activation of PI3-K by insulin or expression of an active form of PI3-K p110 induces a rapid translocation of CKIP-1 to the plasma membrane. Conversely, expression of the 3-phosphoinositide phosphatase myotubularin or PI3-K inhibition by LY294002, wortmannin, or mutant p85 abolishes CKIP-1 binding to the membrane. Upon induction of differentiation in low-serum medium, CKIP-1 overexpression in C2C12 myoblasts first promotes proliferation and then stimulates the expression of myogenin and cell fusion in a manner reminiscent of the dual positive effect of insulin-like growth factors on muscle cells. Interference with the PI3-K pathway impedes the effect of CKIP-1 on C2C12 cell differentiation. Finally, silencing of CKIP-1 by RNA interference abolishes proliferation and delays myogenin expression. Altogether, these data strongly implicate CKIP-1 as a new component of PI3-K signaling in muscle differentiation.In this work, we report the implication of the pleckstrin homology (PH) domain-containing protein CKIP-1 in phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3-K)-regulated muscle differentiation. CKIP-1 is upregulated during muscle differentiation in C2C12 cells. We show that CKIP-1 binds to phosphatidylinositol 3-phosphate through its PH domain and localizes to the plasma membrane in a PI3-K-dependent manner. Activation of PI3-K by insulin or expression of an active form of PI3-K p110 induces a rapid translocation of CKIP-1 to the plasma membrane. Conversely, expression of the 3-phosphoinositide phosphatase myotubularin or PI3-K inhibition by LY294002, wortmannin, or mutant p85 abolishes CKIP-1 binding to the membrane. Upon induction of differentiation in low-serum medium, CKIP-1 overexpression in C2C12 myoblasts first promotes proliferation and then stimulates the expression of myogenin and cell fusion in a manner reminiscent of the dual positive effect of insulin-like growth factors on muscle cells. Interference with the PI3-K pathway impedes the effect of CKIP-1 on C2C12 cell differentiation. Finally, silencing of CKIP-1 by RNA interference abolishes proliferation and delays myogenin expression. Altogether, these data strongly implicate CKIP-1 as a new component of PI3-K signaling in muscle differentiation.

Overexpression of the Cdc25A and Cdc25B dual-specificity phosphatases correlates with a wide variety of cancers, making the Cdc25s attractive drug targets for anticancer therapies. However, the search for good lead molecules has been hampered by the reactivity of the active site thiolate anion and the flat solvent-exposed active site region. We describe here the indolyldihydroxyquinones, a new class of inhibitors of Cdc25 that bind reversibly to the active site with submicromolar potency. Structure-activity relationships in the 50 derivatives of the lead molecule 2,5-dihydroxy-3-(1H-indol-3-yl)[1,4]benzoquinone show interesting and consistent trends identifying features required for inhibition of all three isoforms of Cdc25. The compounds do not show time-dependent inhibition, indicating that they form neither covalent adducts with nor oxidize the active site thiol. Our best compounds, 2,5-dihydroxy-3-(7-farnesyl-1H-indol-3-yl)[1,4]benzoquinone and 2,5-dihydroxy-3-(4,6-dichloro-7-farnesyl-1H-indol-3-yl)[1,4]benzoquinone, are competitive with substrate for the active site and yield K(i)s of 640 and 470 nM, respectively. Binding of the indolylhydroxyquinones is diminished by three, but not by six other, specific mutations in the active site region. Additionally, the flexible C-terminal tail required for binding of protein substrate is also required for binding derivatives with hydrophobic modifications at the 7-position. The indolyldihydroxyquinones compete effectively with the protein substrate for Cdc25 in vitro and lead to rapid cell death in vivo. Thus, the indolyldihydroxyquinones will serve as useful lead molecules for drug discovery and further cell-based studies on the role of Cdc25s in cell cycle control.