Building regulatory landscapes reveals that an enhancer can recruit cohesin to create contact domains, engage CTCF sites and activate distant genes.

Developmental gene expression is often controlled by distal regulatory DNA elements called enhancers. Distant enhancer action is restricted to structural chromosomal domains that are flanked by CTCF-associated boundaries and formed through cohesin chromatin loop extrusion. To better understand how enhancers, genes and CTCF boundaries together form structural domains and control expression, we used a bottom-up approach, building series of active regulatory landscapes in inactive chromatin. We demonstrate here that gene transcription levels and activity over time reduce with increased enhancer distance. The enhancer recruits cohesin to stimulate domain formation and engage flanking CTCF sites in loop formation. It requires cohesin exclusively for the activation of distant genes, not of proximal genes, with nearby CTCF boundaries supporting efficient long-range enhancer action. Our work supports a dual activity model for enhancers: its classic role of stimulating transcription initiation and elongation from target gene promoters and a role of recruiting cohesin for the creation of chromosomal domains, the engagement of CTCF sites in chromatin looping and the activation of distal target genes.

Robust 4C-seq data analysis to screen for regulatory DNA interactions.

Regulatory DNA elements can control the expression of distant genes via physical interactions. Here we present a cost-effective methodology and computational analysis pipeline for robust characterization of the physical organization around selected promoters and other functional elements using chromosome conformation capture combined with high-throughput sequencing (4C-seq). Our approach can be multiplexed and routinely integrated with other functional genomics assays to facilitate physical characterization of gene regulation.

Nucleoside drugs induce cellular differentiation by caspase-dependent degradation of stem cell factors.

BACKGROUND: Stem cell characteristics are an important feature of human cancer cells and play a major role in the therapy resistance of tumours. Strategies to target cancer stem cells are thus of major importance for cancer therapy. Differentiation therapy by nucleoside drugs represents an attractive approach for the elimination of cancer stem cells. However, even if it is generally assumed that the activity of these drugs is mediated by their ability to modulate epigenetic pathways, their precise mode of action remains to be established. We therefore analysed the potential of three nucleoside analogues to induce differentiation of the embryonic cancer stem cell line NTERA 2 D1 and compared their effect to the natural ligand retinoic acid. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: All nucleoside analogues analyzed, but not retinoic acid, triggered proteolytic degradation of the Polycomb group protein EZH2. Two of them, 3-Deazaneplanocin A (DZNep) and 2'-deoxy-5-azacytidine (decitabine), also induced a decrease in global DNA methylation. Nevertheless, only decitabine and 1beta-arabinofuranosylcytosine (cytarabine) effectively triggered neuronal differentiation of NT2 cells. We show that drug-induced differentiation, in contrast to retinoic acid induction, is caused by caspase activation, which mediates depletion of the stem cell factors NANOG and OCT4. Consistent with this observation, protein degradation and differentiation could be counteracted by co-treatment with caspase inhibitors or by depletion of CASPASE-3 and CASPASE-7 through dsRNA interference. In agreement with this, OCT4 was found to be a direct in-vitro-target of CASPASE-7. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: We show that drug-induced differentiation is not a consequence of pharmacologic epigenetic modulation, but is induced by the degradation of stem-cell-specific proteins by caspases. Our results thus uncover a novel pathway that induces differentiation of embryonic cancer stem cells and is triggered by the established anticancer drugs cytarabine and decitabine. These findings suggest new approaches for directly targeting the stem cell fraction of human tumours.