Project description:Ewing sarcoma is an aggressive malignancy characterized by oncogenic rearrangements of the EWS gene with an ETS-family transcription factor, most commonly FLI. Recent comprehensive next-generation sequencing efforts have revealed few other highly recurrent mutations in this disease apart from loss-of-function mutations in STAG2 which occur in 15-20% of tumors. STAG2 is a member of the cohesin complex, which regulates sister chromatid alignment during mitosis and epigenetic regulation of gene expression. While some studies suggest that loss of STAG2 is associated with the development of aneuploidy, this is not the case in Ewing sarcoma. To investigate whether STAG2 loss effects epigenetic regulation of gene expression in Ewing sarcoma, we developed isogenic Ewing sarcoma cell lines with STAG2 knockout. We found that Ewing sarcoma cells engineered for loss of STAG2 maintain an intact cohesion complex that alternately incorporates STAG1.
Project description:Ewing sarcoma is an aggressive malignancy characterized by oncogenic rearrangements of the EWS gene with an ETS-family transcription factor, most commonly FLI. Recent comprehensive next-generation sequencing efforts have revealed few other highly recurrent mutations in this disease apart from loss-of-function mutations in STAG2 which occur in 15-20% of tumors. STAG2 is a member of the cohesin complex, which regulates sister chromatid alignment during mitosis and epigenetic regulation of gene expression. While some studies suggest that loss of STAG2 is associated with the development of aneuploidy, this is not the case in Ewing sarcoma. To investigate whether STAG2 loss affects epigenetic regulation of gene expression in Ewing sarcoma, we developed isogenic Ewing sarcoma cell lines with STAG2 knockout. We found that Ewing sarcoma cells engineered for loss of STAG2 maintain an intact cohesion complex that alternately incorporates STAG1.
Project description:Ewing sarcoma is an aggressive malignancy characterized by oncogenic rearrangements of the EWS gene with an ETS-family transcription factor, most commonly FLI. Recent comprehensive next-generation sequencing efforts have revealed few other highly recurrent mutations in this disease apart from loss-of-function mutations in STAG2 which occur in 15-20% of tumors. STAG2 is a member of the cohesin complex, which regulates sister chromatid alignment during mitosis and epigenetic regulation of gene expression. While some studies suggest that loss of STAG2 is associated with the development of aneuploidy, this is not the case in Ewing sarcoma. To investigate whether STAG2 loss effects epigenetic regulation of gene expression in Ewing sarcoma, we developed isogenic Ewing sarcoma cell lines with STAG2 knockout. We found that Ewing sarcoma cells engineered for loss of STAG2 maintain an intact cohesion complex that alternately incorporates STAG1.
Project description:Ewing sarcoma is an aggressive malignancy characterized by oncogenic rearrangements of the EWS gene with an ETS-family transcription factor, most commonly FLI. Recent comprehensive next-generation sequencing efforts have revealed few other highly recurrent mutations in this disease apart from loss-of-function mutations in STAG2 which occur in 15-20% of tumors. STAG2 is a member of the cohesin complex, which regulates sister chromatid alignment during mitosis and epigenetic regulation of gene expression. While some studies suggest that loss of STAG2 is associated with the development of aneuploidy, this is not the case in Ewing sarcoma. To investigate whether STAG2 loss effects epigenetic regulation of gene expression in Ewing sarcoma, we developed isogenic Ewing sarcoma cell lines with STAG2 knockout. We found that Ewing sarcoma cells engineered for loss of STAG2 maintain an intact cohesion complex that alternately incorporates STAG1.
Project description:SMC1a HiChIP was performed for the Ewing sarcoma cell line A673 under two conditions: 1) cells treated with non-targeting CRISPR Cas9 guides or 2) STAG2-targeting CRISPR Cas9 guides. Cells treated for gene editing were clonally selected and confirmed to either express STAG2 (control condition) or have loss of STAG2 expression (STAG2 loss condition). For the control condition, we used the cell clones A673.sgNT-1c4 and the STAG2 knockout clone A673.sgSTAG2-1c6. HiChIP was performed for each clone in duplicate.
Project description:STAG2 is a member of cohesin complex and its gene is one of the most recurrently mutated in human cancer including in Ewing sarcoma. Here, we investigated STAG2 function in the context of Ewing sarcoma and performed transcriptome profiling of a panel of 15 WT and 15 mutated STAG2 established Ewing sarcoma cell lines.
Project description:Adane B, Alexe G, Seong BKA, Lu D, Hwang E, Hnisz D, Lareau CA, Ross L, Lin S, Dela Cruz FS, Richardson M, Weintraub AS, Wang S, Balboni-Iniguez A, Dharia NV, Conway AS, Robichaud AL, Tanenbaum B, Krill-Burger JM, Vazquez F, Schenone M, Berman JN, Kung A, Carr SA, Aryee MJ, Young RA, Crompton BD, Stegmaier K. 2021 Cancer Cell.
The core cohesin subunit STAG2 is recurrently mutated in Ewing sarcoma but its biological role is less clear. Herein, we demonstrate that cohesin complexes containing STAG2 occupy enhancer and polycomb repressive complex (PRC2) marked regulatory regions. Genetic suppression of STAG2 leads to a compensatory increase in cohesin-STAG1 complexes, but not in enhancer rich regions, and results in reprogramming of cis-chromatin interactions. Strikingly, in STAG2 knockout cells, the oncogenic genetic program driven by the fusion transcription factor EWS/FLI1 was highly perturbed, in part due to altered enhancer-promoter contacts. Moreover, loss of STAG2 also disrupted PRC2-mediated regulation of gene expression. Combined, these transcriptional changes converged to modulate EWS/FLI1, migratory and neurodevelopmental programs. Finally, consistent with clinical observations, functional studies revealed that loss of STAG2 enhances the metastatic potential of Ewing sarcoma xenografts. Our findings demonstrate that STAG2 mutations can alter chromatin architecture and transcriptional programs to promote an aggressive cancer phenotype.