RESUMEN
BACKGROUND: Members of the HMGN protein family modulate chromatin structure and influence epigenetic modifications. HMGN1 and HMGN2 are highly expressed during early development and in the neural stem/progenitor cells of the developing and adult brain. Here, we investigate whether HMGN proteins contribute to the chromatin plasticity and epigenetic regulation that is essential for maintaining pluripotency in stem cells. RESULTS: We show that loss of Hmgn1 or Hmgn2 in pluripotent embryonal carcinoma cells leads to increased levels of spontaneous neuronal differentiation. This is accompanied by the loss of pluripotency markers Nanog and Ssea1, and increased expression of the pro-neural transcription factors Neurog1 and Ascl1. Neural stem cells derived from these Hmgn-knockout lines also show increased spontaneous neuronal differentiation and Neurog1 expression. The loss of HMGN2 leads to a global reduction in H3K9 acetylation, and disrupts the profile of H3K4me3, H3K9ac, H3K27ac and H3K122ac at the Nanog and Oct4 loci. At endodermal/mesodermal genes, Hmgn2-knockout cells show a switch from a bivalent to a repressive chromatin configuration. However, at neuronal lineage genes whose expression is increased, no epigenetic changes are observed and their bivalent states are retained following the loss of HMGN2. CONCLUSIONS: We conclude that HMGN1 and HMGN2 maintain the identity of pluripotent embryonal carcinoma cells by optimising the pluripotency transcription factor network and protecting the cells from precocious differentiation. Our evidence suggests that HMGN2 regulates active and bivalent genes by promoting an epigenetic landscape of active histone modifications at promoters and enhancers.
Asunto(s)
Cromatina/metabolismo , Proteína HMGN2/metabolismo , Animales , Factores de Transcripción con Motivo Hélice-Asa-Hélice Básico/química , Factores de Transcripción con Motivo Hélice-Asa-Hélice Básico/metabolismo , Diferenciación Celular , Línea Celular Tumoral , Autorrenovación de las Células , Proteína HMGN1/genética , Proteína HMGN1/metabolismo , Proteína HMGN2/genética , Histonas/metabolismo , Ratones , Proteína Homeótica Nanog/genética , Proteína Homeótica Nanog/metabolismo , Proteínas del Tejido Nervioso/química , Proteínas del Tejido Nervioso/metabolismo , Células-Madre Neurales/citología , Células-Madre Neurales/metabolismo , Neuronas/citología , Neuronas/metabolismo , Factor 3 de Transcripción de Unión a Octámeros/metabolismo , Células Madre Pluripotentes/citología , Células Madre Pluripotentes/metabolismo , Procesamiento Proteico-PostraduccionalRESUMEN
SUMMARY: The Polyomics integrated Metabolomics Pipeline (PiMP) fulfils an unmet need in metabolomics data analysis. PiMP offers automated and user-friendly analysis from mass spectrometry data acquisition to biological interpretation. Our key innovations are the Summary Page, which provides a simple overview of the experiment in the format of a scientific paper, containing the key findings of the experiment along with associated metadata; and the Metabolite Page, which provides a list of each metabolite accompanied by 'evidence cards', which provide a variety of criteria behind metabolite annotation including peak shapes, intensities in different sample groups and database information. AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION: PiMP is available at http://polyomics.mvls.gla.ac.uk, and access is freely available on request. 50 GB of space is allocated for data storage, with unrestricted number of samples and analyses per user. Source code is available at https://github.com/RonanDaly/pimp and licensed under the GPL. CONTACT: karl.burgess@glasgow.ac.uk. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
