p53-induced Regulation of Transcription in the Chromatin Context

Zhurkin, Victor

Abstract

As a transcription factor, p53 modulates expression of thousands of genes involved in a variety of cellular functions. p53 exhibits high affinity to the response elements (REs) regulating cell cycle arrest genes (CCA-sites), but relatively low affinity to the sites associated with apoptosis (Apo-sites). Since p53 can bind nucleosomal DNA, we sought to understand if the two groups of p53 sites differ in their accessibility when embedded in nucleosomes. To this aim, we analyzed the sequence-dependent bending anisotropy of human genomic DNA containing p53 sites. We calculated rotational positioning patterns predicting that most of the CCA-sites are exposed on the nucleosomal surface. This is consistent with experimentally observed positioning of human nucleosomes. Remarkably, the sequence-dependent DNA anisotropy of both the p53 sites and flanking DNA work in concert producing strong positioning signals. By contrast, both the predicted and observed rotational settings of the Apo-sites in nucleosomes suggest that many of these sites are buried inside, thus preventing immediate p53 recognition and delaying gene induction. We also measured the p53 binding to its cognate sites embedded in the in strongly positioned '601' nucleosome. Our data suggest that the p53 affinity to DNA strongly correlates with the rotational positioning of its site in nucleosome, in agreement with the computational analysis described above. The exposed configurations of the p53 sites in nucleosome (like CCA-sites) demonstrate significantly stronger affinity to p53 compared to the buried configurations (similar to the Apo-sites). Thus, the difference in nucleosomal organization of the two sets of p53 response elements appears to be a key factor affecting the strength of p53-DNA binding and kinetics of induction of the p53 target genes. Our model differs from the earlier concept connecting the selective activation of the CCA- and Apo-genes to the binding affinities of their REs to p53. Instead, we emphasize a direct correlation between the selection of p53-induced tumor suppression pathway (apoptosis versus cell cycle arrest) and structural organization of the corresponding p53-binding sites in chromatin. We add new dimensions to the existing paradigm, namely, the relative positioning and chromatin environment of the p53 REs. Our scheme not only explains the above cases but also provides a new insight into the cellular mechanisms of activation of hundreds of genes by p53. Recently, we performed a comprehensive analysis of 25 published p53 cistromes and identified thousands binding sites in normal and cancer cells. Our analysis revealed two distinct epigenetic features underlying p53-DNA interactions in vivo. First, we found that p53 binding sites are associated with transcriptionally active histone marks (H3K4me3 and H3K36me3) in normal-cell chromatin, but with repressive histone marks (H3K27me3) in cancer-cell chromatin. Second, p53 binding sites in cancer cells are characterized by a lower level of DNA methylation than their counterparts in normal cells, probably related to global hypomethylation in cancers. In addition, regardless of the cell type, p53 sites are highly enriched in the endogenous retroviral elements of the ERV1 family, highlighting the importance of this repeat family in shaping the transcriptional network of p53. Moreover, the p53 sites exhibit an unusual combination of chromatin patterns: high nucleosome occupancy and, at the same time, high sensitivity to DNase I. Our results suggest that p53 can access its target sites in a chromatin environment that is non-permissive to most DNA-binding factors, which may allow p53 to act as a pioneer transcription factor in the context of chromatin.