The organization of the chromatin fiber within the nucleus may play an important role in the expression of eukaryotic genes, but little is known about the mechanisms regulating the establishment and maintenance of higher-order chromatin domains. Chromatin insulators appear to be important players in the establishment of these domains and they may regulate gene expression by controlling the organization of the DMA within the nucleus. The Su(Hw) insulator, originally found in the gypsy retrotransposon, is part of a family of insulators that use various DMA binding proteins to tether a common protein, CP190, to the chromosomes. Protein components of this insulator are present at several hundred sites on polytene chromosomes, but they concentrate at approximately 25 sites called insulator bodies located mostly in the nuclear periphery of diploid cells in interphase, causing the chromatin fiber to form rosette-like structures. Preliminary results suggest that the nuclear organization imposed by insulators changes during development. These changes may be regulated by covalent modification of insulator proteins. In this application, we propose to continue investigating the mechanisms controlling insulator function by analyzing in detail the role of ubiquitination and sumoylation of insulator proteins in the regulation of insulator activity. Amino acid residues critical for these modifications will be mutated and the activity and distribution of modified and non-modified proteins will be analyzed. Other subfamilies of the general CP190 insulator class will be studied in detail. Proteins responsible for DMA binding of these new insulator classes will be identified and the possibility that they are coordinately regulated by ubiquitination and sumoylation will be analyzed. The role of the nuclear lamina in the establishment and maintenance of insulator bodies will be determined. In particular, we will analyze the possibility that ubiquitination and/or sumoylation of lamin regulates the assembly of insulator bodies or their interaction with the nuclear lamina. Finally, we will examine the genome-wide distribution of active insulators in stem versus differentiated cells to determine whether the organization of the rosette structures formed by the coalescence of multiple insulators changes during development and cell differentiation. Results from these experiments will help in understanding how stem cells differentiate along various developmental pathways and how alterations in gene expression patterns may result in cancer.
| Rowley, M Jordan; Corces, Victor G (2018) Organizational principles of 3D genome architecture. Nat Rev Genet 19:789-800 |
| Nichols, Michael H; Corces, Victor G (2018) A tethered-inchworm model of SMC DNA translocation. Nat Struct Mol Biol 25:906-910 |
| Xu, Chenhuan; Corces, Victor G (2018) Genome-Wide Mapping of Protein-DNA Interactions on Nascent Chromatin. Methods Mol Biol 1766:231-238 |
| Lyu, Xiaowen; Rowley, M Jordan; Corces, Victor G (2018) Architectural Proteins and Pluripotency Factors Cooperate to Orchestrate the Transcriptional Response of hESCs to Temperature Stress. Mol Cell 71:940-955.e7 |
| Ando-Kuri, Masami; Rivera, I Sarahi M; Rowley, M Jordan et al. (2018) Analysis of Chromatin Interactions Mediated by Specific Architectural Proteins in Drosophila Cells. Methods Mol Biol 1766:239-256 |
| Arzate-Mejía, Rodrigo G; Recillas-Targa, Félix; Corces, Victor G (2018) Developing in 3D: the role of CTCF in cell differentiation. Development 145: |
| Cubeñas-Potts, Caelin; Rowley, M Jordan; Lyu, Xiaowen et al. (2017) Different enhancer classes in Drosophila bind distinct architectural proteins and mediate unique chromatin interactions and 3D architecture. Nucleic Acids Res 45:1714-1730 |
| Rowley, M Jordan; Nichols, Michael H; Lyu, Xiaowen et al. (2017) Evolutionarily Conserved Principles Predict 3D Chromatin Organization. Mol Cell 67:837-852.e7 |
| Hashimoto, Hideharu; Wang, Dongxue; Horton, John R et al. (2017) Structural Basis for the Versatile and Methylation-Dependent Binding of CTCF to DNA. Mol Cell 66:711-720.e3 |
| Jung, Yoon Hee; Sauria, Michael E G; Lyu, Xiaowen et al. (2017) Chromatin States in Mouse Sperm Correlate with Embryonic and Adult Regulatory Landscapes. Cell Rep 18:1366-1382 |
Showing the most recent 10 out of 116 publications
