Abstract
The regulatory specificity of enhancers and their interaction with gene promoters is thought to be controlled by their sequence and the binding of transcription factors. By studying Pitx1, a regulator of hindlimb development, we show that dynamic changes in chromatin conformation can restrict the activity of enhancers. Inconsistent with its hindlimb-restricted expression, Pitx1 is controlled by an enhancer (Pen) that shows activity in forelimbs and hindlimbs. By Capture Hi-C and three-dimensional modeling of the locus, we demonstrate that forelimbs and hindlimbs have fundamentally different chromatin configurations, whereby Pen and Pitx1 interact in hindlimbs and are physically separated in forelimbs. Structural variants can convert the inactive into the active conformation, thereby inducing Pitx1 misexpression in forelimbs, causing partial arm-to-leg transformation in mice and humans. Thus, tissue-specific three-dimensional chromatin conformation can contribute to enhancer activity and specificity in vivo and its disturbance can result in gene misexpression and disease.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Journal | Nature Genetics |
| Volume | 50 |
| Issue number | 10 |
| Pages (from-to) | 1463-1473 |
| Number of pages | 11 |
| ISSN | 1061-4036 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 01.10.2018 |
Funding
We thank Judith Fiedler, Niclas Engemann and Karol Macura from the transgenic facility, Norbert Brieske for the WISH, and Myriam Hochradel from the sequencing core facility of the MPIMG. This study was supported by grants from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (SP1532/2-1, MU 880/14) to M.S. and S.M., as well as the Max Planck Foundation to S.M. G.A. was supported by an early and advanced postdoc mobility grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation (P300PA_160964, P2ELP3_151960). M.N. acknowledges grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) (1U54DK107977-01), CINECA ISCRA (HP10CRTY8P), the Einstein BIH Fellowship Award (EVF-BIH-2016-282), and computer resources from the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, CINECA, and SCoPE at the University of Naples. A.V. was supported by NIH grants R01HG003988, U54HG006997, R24HL123879, and UM1HL098166. Work at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory was performed under Department of Energy Contract DE-AC02-05CH11231, University of California.
