Polycomb Repressive Complex 1 functions in differentiation and myelodysplastic syndromes
Polycomb proteins are important epigenetic regulators involved in the maintenance of stemness and differentiation. In this thesis, I focused on the role of some Polycomb Repressive Complex 1 (PRC1) components. On the one hand, I studied the role of Cbx8 PRC1 component protein in the differentiation...
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| Tipo de recurso: | tesis doctoral |
| Estado: | Versión publicada |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2016 |
| País: | España |
| Institución: | CBUC, CESCA |
| Repositorio: | TDR. Tesis Doctorales en Red |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:www.tdx.cat:10803/400293 |
| Acceso en línea: | http://hdl.handle.net/10803/400293 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palabra clave: | Epigènesi Epigenesis Proteïnes Proteínas Proteins Cèl·lules mare embrionàries Células madre embrionarias Embryonic stem cells Ciències de la Salut 616 |
| Sumario: | Polycomb proteins are important epigenetic regulators involved in the maintenance of stemness and differentiation. In this thesis, I focused on the role of some Polycomb Repressive Complex 1 (PRC1) components. On the one hand, I studied the role of Cbx8 PRC1 component protein in the differentiation of mouse embryonic stem cells (mESCs). On the other hand, I analyzed the role of PRC1 components in a hematological disease-related context which implies a defect in differentiation, the myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS). Specifically, I focused on RING1A PRC1-component function in this disease. Our previous data showed that upon addition of retinoic acid (RA) during 3 days to E14 mouse ESC cell line, by which cells were prompted into the neuronal lineage, Cbx8 was upregulated both at mRNA and protein level. We performed a genome-wide chromatin immunoprecipitation of endogenous Cbx8 coupled to direct massive parallel sequencing (ChIP-seq) to assess the binding sites of Cbx8 genome- wide using IgG and Cbx8 ChIP in untreated mESC as negative controls. Our analysis identified 171 high confidence peaks. To our surprise, by crossing our data with previously published microarray analysis, we showed that several differentiation genes transiently recruit Cbx8 during their early activation. Depletion of Cbx8 by 2 different shRNA partially impaired the transcriptional activation of these genes as well as diminish Cbx8 recruitment to its target genes. Both interaction analysis, as well as chromatin immunoprecipitation experiments supported the idea that activating Cbx8 acts in the context of an intact PRC1 complex. Prolonged gene activation resulted in eviction of PRC1 despite persisting H3K27me3 and H2A ubiquitination. The composition of PRC1 is highly modular and changes when embryonic stem cells commit to differentiation. We further demonstrated that the exchange of Cbx7 for Cbx8 is required for the effective activation of differentiation genes. Taken together, our results establish a function for a Cbx8-containing complex in facilitating the transition from a Polycomb- repressed chromatin state to an active state. In order to characterize the function of PRC1 in the pathogenesis of MDS we used publicly available expression datasets of PRC1 components from MDS patients and during normal myeloid differentiation to identify and quantify the level of relevant PRC1 complexes. From this data mining we selected four PRC1 components (CBX6, BMI1, RING1A and CBX7) and two PRC2 components (EZH2 and ASXL1) for further analysis. To study these PRC components we wished to use cell lines that are MDS-related. For this reason, we extensively characterized 5 MDS/AML derived cell lines by conventional cytogenetics, single nucleotide polymorphism arrays, mutational panel of 83 MDS/AML relevant genes and immunoprofile. After this study, we selected SKK-1 cell line as the most suitable model to study the function of the selected PRC1 components. Based on the finding that RING1A is highly expressed in hematopoietic stem cells and further overexpressed in patients with high risk MDS, we have analyzed the role of RING1A in cells. We found that RING1A inhibits differentiation in MDS-derived AML cells and in primary human hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs). We further provide first evidence that pharmacological inhibition of RING1A could be therapeutic strategy by showing that the treatment of HSCs favors differentiation. |
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