Dataset Information

Tissue-specific RNA Polymerase II promoter-proximal pause release and burst kinetics in a Drosophila embryonic patterning network

ABSTRACT: Background Formation of tissue-specific transcriptional programs underlies multicellular development, including dorsoventral (DV) patterning of the Drosophila embryo. This involves interactions between transcriptional enhancers and promoters in a chromatin context, but how the chromatin landscape influences transcription is not fully understood. Results Here we comprehensively resolve differential transcriptional and chromatin states during Drosophila DV patterning. We find that RNA Polymerase II pausing is established at DV promoters prior to zygotic genome activation (ZGA), that pausing persists irrespective of cell fate, but that release into productive elongation is tightly regulated and accompanied by tissue-specific P-TEFb recruitment. DV enhancers acquire distinct tissue-specific chromatin states through CBP-mediated histone acetylation that predict the transcriptional output of target genes, whereas promoter states are more tissue-invariant. Transcriptome-wide inference of burst kinetics in different cell types revealed that while DV genes are generally characterized by a high burst size, either burst size or frequency can differ between tissues. Conclusions The data suggest that pausing is established by pioneer transcription factors prior to ZGA and that release from pausing is imparted by enhancer chromatin state to regulate bursting in a tissue-specific manner in the early embryo. Our results uncover how developmental patterning is orchestrated by tissue-specific bursts of transcription from Pol II primed promoters in response to enhancer regulatory cues.

ORGANISM(S): Drosophila melanogaster

PROVIDER: GSE211220 | GEO | 2023/11/23

REPOSITORIES: GEO

ACCESS DATA

Similar Datasets

Project description:The submitted data have been utilized in the following two papers: "Drosophila poised enhancers are generated during tissue patterning with the help of repression" (Koenecke et al 2016, Genome Research): Histone modifications are frequently used as markers for enhancer states, but how to interpret enhancer states in the context of embryonic development is not clear. The poised enhancer signature, involving H3K4me1 and low levels of H3K27ac, has been reported to mark inactive enhancers that are poised for future activation. However, future activation is not always observed and alternative reasons for the widespread occurrence of this enhancer signature have not been investigated. By analyzing enhancers during dorsal-ventral (DV) axis formation in the Drosophila embryo, we find that the poised enhancer signature is specifically generated during patterning in the tissue where the enhancers are not induced, including at enhancers that are known to be repressed by a transcriptional repressor. These results suggest that, rather than serving simply as an intermediate step before future activation, the poised enhancer state may mark enhancers for spatial activation during tissue patterning. We discuss the possibility that the poised enhancer state is more generally the result of repression by transcriptional repressors. "Genome-wide identification of Drosophila dorso-ventral enhancers by differential histone acetylation analysis" (Koenecke and Johnston et al 2016, Genome Biol): Background: Drosophila dorso-ventral (DV) patterning is one of the best-understood regulatory networks to date, and illustrates the fundamental role of enhancers in controlling patterning, cell fate specification and morphogenesis during development. Histone acetylation such as H3K27ac is an excellent marker for active enhancers, but it is challenging to obtain precise locations for enhancers as the highest levels of this modification flank the enhancer regions. How to best identify tissue-specific enhancers in a developmental system de novo with a minimal set of data is still unclear. Results: Using DV patterning as a test system, we develop a simple and effective method to identify tissue-specific enhancers de novo. We sample a broad set of candidate enhancer regions using data on CBP co-factor binding or ATAC-seq chromatin accessibility, and then identify those regions with significant differences in histone acetylation between tissues. This method identifies hundreds of novel DV enhancers and outperforms ChIP-seq data of relevant transcription factors when benchmarked with mRNA expression data and transgenic reporter assays. These DV enhancers allow the de novo discovery of the relevant transcription factor motifs involved in DV patterning and contain additional motifs that are evolutionarily conserved and for which the corresponding transcription factors are expressed in a DV-biased fashion. Finally, we identify novel target genes of the regulatory network, implicating morphogenesis genes as early targets of DV patterning. Conclusions: Taken together, our approach has expanded our knowledge of the DV patterning network even further and is a general method to identify enhancers in any developmental system, including mammalian development.

Dataset Information

Tissue-specific RNA Polymerase II promoter-proximal pause release and burst kinetics in a Drosophila embryonic patterning network

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure