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RESEARCH COMMUNICATION
1 Department of Biochemistry and Cell Biology and the Center for Developmental Genetics, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, New York 11794, USA; 2 Graduate Program in Biochemistry and Structural Biology, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, New York 11794, USA; 3 Center for Gene Regulation, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania 16802, USA
| Abstract |
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[Keywords: Segmentation; ChIP; DNase I hypersensitivity; in vivo footprinting]
Received December 5, 2006; revised version accepted March 13, 2007.
The segmentally repeated expression of slp1 initiates during the late cellular blastoderm stage and becomes fully apparent by the onset of gastrulation (
3.5 h of development). The combinatorial rules that generate this pattern differ in odd- and even-numbered parasegments. Expression in the posterior half of odd parasegments requires the pair-rule transcription factors Runt and Odd-paired (Opa). In contrast, in the adjacent cells that comprise the anterior half of the even parasegments, the presence of Ftz converts Runt from an activator to a repressor of slp1 expression (Swantek and Gergen 2004
). Normally, these combinatorial rules only apply within the presegmental region of the embryo. However, ectopic coexpression of Runt and Opa in embryos that are mutant for Ftz leads to slp1 activation in all somatic blastoderm cells, whereas ectopic coexpression of both Runt and Ftz gives slp1 repression throughout the embryo (Fig. 1A). Thus, all late blastoderm stage nuclei can adopt slp1 expression states characteristic of posterior odd-numbered or anterior even-numbered parasegments in response to these pair-rule transcription factors. The uniform repression of slp1 in response to Runt and Ftz is of particular interest, as it is straightforward to generate staged populations of these embryos that can be used to investigate the in vivo biochemistry of this repression. Indeed, in matched embryo collections processed 34 h AED (after egg deposition), quantitative RTPCR reveals 40-fold less slp1 mRNA in embryos that are ectopically coexpressing Runt and Ftz compared with wild-type embryos. Our goal in this study was to identify the molecular changes at the slp1 locus that account for this 40-fold difference in expression.
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| Results and Discussion |
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The above observations led us to characterize the interactions of the transcriptional machinery with slp1. Association of the TATA-box-binding protein (TBP) is a first step in assembly of the transcriptional machinery on a promoter (Green 2000
). As expected, TBP association is detected with a promoter-proximal interval centered 6 base pairs (bp) upstream of the slp1 transcript initiation site in chromatin from wild-type embryos (Fig. 3A). A weaker signal is detected for an interval within the 5' untranslated region (UTR), centered 124 bp downstream from the start site, whereas all other intervals give background level signals. We find very similar levels of TBP association in chromatin from R+F embryos (Fig. 3A). More surprising is the finding that there is almost no difference in the level of Pol II association with the slp1 promoter-proximal interval in chromatin from wild-type and R+F embryos (Fig. 3B). Pol II is also associated with the slp1 structural gene in wild-type embryos, but at lower levels than at the promoter (Fig. 3B). In contrast, Pol II association with the slp1 structural gene is markedly reduced in R+F embryos and near to background levels for regions downstream from the 5'-UTR (Fig. 3B). Based on these results, we conclude that promoter recruitment of Pol II is not blocked in slp1-repressed embryos. We further characterized slp1-associated Pol II using an antibody that recognizes the Phospho-Ser-5 form of the heptad repeats that comprise the C-terminal domain (CTD) of the largest Pol II subunit. Phospho-Ser-5 modification of the CTD is associated with transcription initiation (Komarnitsky et al. 2000
; Sims et al. 2004
; Morris et al. 2005
). This antiserum also gives the strongest signals with the slp1 promoter-proximal interval in wild-type chromatin, and this signal is not reduced in chromatin from R+F embryos (Fig. 3C). This result indicates that slp1 repression occurs at a step downstream from transcription initiation.
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Regulation of transcriptional elongation has been described for several genes in addition to the Drosophila heat-shock genes, including human c-myc, c-myb, c-fos, junB, and p21 (Bender et al. 1987
; Pinaud and Mirkovitch 1998
; Chen and Sytkowski 2001
; Aida et al. 2006
; Gomes et al. 2006
). A feature shared by these previously characterized examples is rapid induction of gene expression in response to external stimuli. The initial establishment of segment-polarity gene-expression patterns in response to the pair-rule transcription factors occurs within a relatively brief developmental window of
30 min, spanning the completion of cellularization and the beginning of germ band extension. The temporal advantages offered by regulating these genes at a transcriptional elongation step as compared with chromatin remodeling and/or Pol II initiation complex assembly may be essential for the timely establishment of differing gene expression programs during cell fate specification in the Drosophila blastoderm embryo. The observations that Pol II molecules are enriched at the 5'-ends of a number of genes (Gariglio et al. 1981
; Rougvie and Lis 1990
), coupled with findings that defects in transcriptional elongation factors produce specific developmental defects (Guo et al. 2000
; Jennings et al. 2004
), strongly suggest that regulation of transcriptional elongation is a hitherto overlooked, but potentially widespread strategy for controlling gene expression during development.
| Materials and methods |
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The Drosophila strain y w[67c23] that was used to develop different transgenic lines was used as the wild-type control for all in situ hybridization and biochemical experiments. Uniform ectopic expression of different pair-rule genes was obtained using the NGT (nanos-GAL4-tubulin) maternal GAL4 expression system (Tracey et al. 2000
). The genetic cross to express Runt and Opa in embryos mutant for ftz was between females homozygous for the NGT[40] GAL4-driver and heterozygous for the ftz[11] mutation and males homozygous for both the UAS-runt[15]and UAS-opa[14] transgenes and heterozygous for ftz[11]. Ectopic coexpression of Runt and Ftz was obtained by crossing females homozygous for both the NGT[40] and NGT[A] GAL4 drivers with males homozygous for both the UAS-runt[15] and UAS-ftz[263] transgenes. These different NGT, UAS-runt, UAS-opa, and UAS-ftz transgenes have all been described previously (Swantek and Gergen 2004
).
In situ hybridization and RTPCR
In situ hybridization was carried out as described previously (Swantek and Gergen 2004
) using the digoxigenin-labeled riboprobe for slp1 described in Wheeler et al. (2002)
. RNA used for PCR after reverse-transcription was isolated from homogenates of
200 embryos from appropriately staged collections. RNA was extracted using the High Pure RNA isolation Kit (Roche). cDNA was synthesized using the 1st Strand cDNA synthesis Kit (Roche) programmed with 1 ug of RNA. Quantitative PCR was conducted using a Light Cycler (Roche) with a primer pair centered 504 bp downstream from the slp1 promoter (primer pair 6 in Fig. 2B). The slp1 RTPCR signal obtained with different RNA samples was normalized using the RTPCR signal for rp49.
DNase I-hypersensitive site assay
Nuclei isolated from
250 mg of staged Drosophila embryos (Cartwright et al. 1999
) were resuspended in DNase I digestion buffer, aliquoted into microfuge tubes, and incubated with 0, 2, 4, or 8 U of DNase I for 3 min on ice. Digestion was stopped by addition of EDTA to 15 mM and SDS to 0.5%. DNA was purified by phenol/chloroform extraction and ethanol precipitation, and resuspended in water. Approximately 5 ug of DNA samples digested with BstXI were run on 1% agarose gels and transferred to nylon membranes for Southern blot hybridization. The slp1 riboprobe used for these experiments is similar to the one used for in situ hybridization, although it was not subjected to partial hydrolysis prior to use for hybridization. DNA size standards were detected on Southern blots using a digoxigenin-labeled DNA probe.
ChIP
Staged embryo collections were dechorionated, fixed with 2% formaldehyde for 15 min at room temperature, washed, and snap-frozen at 80°C for storage (Orlando et al. 1998
). Approximately 100 mg of embryos were homogenized for 1 min in 10 mM EDTA and 50 mM Tris (pH 8.1). After addition of SDS to a final concentration of 1% and incubation on ice for 10 min, glass beads (150200 µm) were added and the homogenates were sonicated to give sheared chromatin preparations with an average DNA size of 300400 bp. Chromatin preparations from the equivalent of
25 mg of embryos were used for each immunoprecipitation using the Chromatin Immunoprecipitation Assay Kit (Upstate Biotechnology) with the following antisera: anti-rabbit IgG (Sigma), anti-mouse IgG (Sigma), anti-mouse IgM (Sigma), anti-Histone H3 (Abcam), anti-acetyl-Histone H3 (Upstate Biotechnology), anti-TBP (Lebedeva et al. 2005
), anti-RNA pol II 8WG16 (Covance), anti-RNA pol II H14 (Covance), and anti-NELF-D and anti-NELF-E (Wu et al. 2003
). The relative amount of immunoprecipitated DNA was quantified using real-time PCR (Roche Light-Cycler) using primer pairs with a Tm in the range of 59°C66°C that generate products between 150 and 211 bp. Primer sequences are available on request. The percent precipitation values that are reported were calculated using a dilution series of input chromatin to determine the relative efficiency for each primer pair. PCR was done multiple times on samples from at least two independent immunoprecipitation assays using at least two different chromatin preparations.
Permanganate footprinting
Permanganate footprinting on Drosophila S2 cells was performed as described previously using 10 mM KMnO4 for a 1-min incubation (Weber et al. 1997
). For embryos, collections of 34-h-AED embryos (10 µL, corresponding to
103 embryos or 107 genomes) were dechorionated, transferred into 150 µL of ice-cold dissection buffer (130 mM NaCl, 5 mM NaCl, 5 mM KCl, 1.5 mM CaCl2), and briefly homogenized prior to addition of 50 µL of 40 mM KMnO4. Reactions were stopped after 1 min by addition of 200 µL of stop solution (20 mM Tris at pH 7.5, 20 mM NaCl, 40 mM EDTA, 1% SDS, 0.8 M
-mercaptoethanol) to the lysate. Nested primers for detecting cleavage within the slp1 promoter and 5'-UTR interval by Ligation-Mediated PCR span the interval from 161 to 199 nucleotides (nt) downstream from the transcription start site. The sequences and annealing temperature for PCR are as follows: slp1 primer-1, 5'-GTTTTGATGGGTTGAGTTG-3' (51°C); slp1 primer-2 5'-GGGT TGAGTTGCGGTGT-3' (55°C); slp1 primer-3, 5'-GCGGTGTTGAT GGGTTTCTT-3' (58°C).
| Acknowledgments |
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| Footnotes |
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E-MAIL pgergen{at}life.bio.sunysb.edu; FAX (631) 632-8575. ![]()
Article is online at http://www.genesdev.org/cgi/doi/10.1101/gad.1521207
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