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A Mechanism of Cohesin-Dependent Loop Extrusion Organizes Zygotic Genome Architecture

ABSTRACT: Fertilization triggers assembly of higher-order chromatin structure from a nucleosomal state to generate a totipotent embryo. Chromatin loops and domains are detected in mouse zygotes by single-nucleus Hi-C (snHi-C) but not bulk Hi-C; both are absent in Drosophila embryos. We investigated whether zygotic chromatin structures are generated by cohesin-dependent loop extrusion. Using snHi-C of mouse knockout embryos, we demonstrate the zygotic genome folds into loops and domains that critically depend on Scc1-cohesin and are regulated in size by Wapl. Remarkably, we discovered distinct effects on maternal and paternal chromatin loop sizes, likely reflecting loop extrusion dynamics and reprogramming states. Polymer simulations based on snHi-C are consistent with a model where cohesin locally compacts chromatin and restricts inter-chromosomal interactions by active loop extrusion, whose processivity is controlled by Wapl. Our simulations and experimental data provide evidence that cohesin-dependent loop extrusion organizes mammalian genomes over multiple scales from the one-cell embryo onwards.

ORGANISM(S): Mus musculus

PROVIDER: GSE100569 | GEO | 2017/08/25

SECONDARY ACCESSION(S): PRJNA392125

REPOSITORIES: GEO

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Project description:Cohesin organizes mammalian interphase chromosomes by reeling chromatin fibers into dynamic loops. "Loop extrusion" is obstructed when cohesin encounters a properly oriented CTCF protein. It has been proposed that transcription relocalizes or interferes with cohesin, and that active transcription start sites function as cohesin loading sites, but how these effects, and transcription in general, shape chromatin is unknown. To determine whether transcription can modulate loop extrusion, we studied cells in which the primary extrusion barriers could be removed by CTCF depletion and cohesin’s residence time and abundance on chromatin could be increased by Wapl knockout. We found evidence that transcription directly interacts with loop extrusion through a novel "moving barrier" mechanism, but not by loading cohesin at active promoters. Hi-C experiments showed intricate, cohesin-dependent genomic contact patterns near actively transcribed genes, and in CTCF-Wapl double knockout (DKO) cells, genomic contacts were enriched between sites of transcription-driven cohesin localization ("cohesin islands"). Similar patterns also emerged in polymer simulations in which transcribing RNA polymerases (RNAPs) acted as "moving barriers" by impeding, slowing, or pushing loop-extruding cohesins. The model predicts that cohesin does not load preferentially at promoters and instead accumulates at TSSs due to the barrier function of RNAPs. We tested this prediction by new ChIP-seq experiments, which revealed that the "cohesin loader" Nipbl co-localizes with cohesin, but, unlike in previous reports, Nipbl did not accumulate at active promoters. We propose that RNAP acts as a new type of barrier to loop extrusion that, unlike CTCF, is not stationary in its precise genomic position, but is itself dynamically translocating and relocalizes cohesin along DNA. In this way, loop extrusion could enable translocating RNAPs to maintain contacts with distal regulatory elements, allowing transcriptional activity to shape genomic functional organization.

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A Mechanism of Cohesin-Dependent Loop Extrusion Organizes Zygotic Genome Architecture

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