Project description:The cellular responses to the steroid hormones, estrogen (E2), and progesterone (P4) are governed by their cognate receptor’s transcriptional output. Although multiple mechanisms including the tissue-specific coactivators dictate these transcriptional signatures, the feed-forward mechanisms, that evolved to coordinate the cell-type specific transcriptional fulcrums for steroid receptors are not yet identified. In this report, we found that a common feed-forward mechanism between GREB1 and steroid receptors governs the differential effect of GREB1 on steroid hormones in a physiological or pathological context. We found that in physiological (receptive) endometrium, GREB1 is essential for progesterone but not estrogenic responses, whereas in endometriosis, an E2-dependent endometrial pathology, it pre-dominantly mediates estrogenic actions. Specifically, the deletion of GREB1 curtails endometrial receptivity and decidualization, owing to impaired P4-dependent stromal cell proliferation. In contrast, GREB1 is not required for E2-mediated epithelial proliferation of the receptive uterus. Of mechanism, in receptive endometrium, progesterone-induced GREB1 physically interacts with the progesterone receptor on chromatin and functions as a cofactor in a positive feedback mechanism to selectively regulate P4-responses. In pathological conditions (endometriosis), ablation of GREB1 led to the development of smaller endometriotic lesions in mice and reduced E2-driven proliferation of human endometriotic cells. Moreover, E2-induced GREB1 modulated the E2-dependent target gene expression in a feed-forward mechanism. Collectively, acting as a downstream effector, GREB1 governs either P4-responses or E2-responses depending on the physiological or pathological setting. Importantly, this differential action of GREB1 is exerted by a common feed-forward mechanism between GREB1 and steroid receptors, which conceptually advances our understanding of the mechanism(s) that underlie the distinct cell- and tissue-specific actions of steroid hormones.

Project description:Pluripotent stem cells (PSCs) have increasingly been used to model different aspects of embryogenesis and organ formation. Despite recent advances in the in vitro induction of major mesodermal lineages and mesoderm-derived cell types experimental model systems that can recapitulate more complex biological features of human mesoderm development and patterning are largely missing. Here, we utilized induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) for the stepwise in vitro induction of presomitic mesoderm (PSM) and its derivatives to model distinct aspects of human somitogenesis. We focused initially on modeling the human segmentation clock, a major biological concept believed to underlie the rhythmic and controlled emergence of somites, which give rise to the segmental pattern of the vertebrate axial skeleton. We succeeded to observe oscillatory expression of core segmentation clock genes, including HES7 and DKK1, determined the period of the human segmentation clock to be around five hours and showed the presence of dynamic traveling wave-like gene expression within in vitro induced human PSM. We furthermore identified and compared oscillatory genes in human and murine PSC-derived PSM, which revealed species-specific as well as common molecular components and novel pathways associated with the mouse and human segmentation clocks. Utilizing CRISPR/Cas9-based genome editing technology, we then targeted genes, for which mutations in patients with segmentation defects of vertebrae (SDV) such as spondylocostal dysostosis (SCD) have been reported (e.g. HES7, LFNG, DLL3 and MESP2 DLL3). Subsequent analysis of patient-like knock-out and point-mutation lines as well as patient-derived iPSCs together with their genetically corrected isogenic controls revealed gene-specific alterations in oscillation, synchronization or differentiation properties, validating the overall utility of our model system, to provide novel insights into the human segmentation clock as well as diseases associated with the formation of the human axial skeleton.

Dataset Information

Greb1 is required for axial elongation and segmentation in vertebrate embryos

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