Project description:While it has been clearly established that well positioned H2A.Z-containing nucleosomes flank the nucleosome depleted region (NDR) at the transcriptional start site (TSS) of active mammalian genes 1,2, how this chromatin-based information is transmitted through the cell cycle is unknown. We show here that in trophoblast stem (TS) cells, the level of H2A.Z at promoters decreases during S phase coinciding with homotypic (H2A.Z/H2A.Z) nucleosomes flanking the TSS becoming heterotypic (H2A.Z/H2A). Surprisingly, these nucleosomes remain heterotypic at M phase. At the TSS, we identify an unstable heterotypic H2A.Z-containing nucleosome in G1 which, strikingly, is lost following DNA replication. These dynamic changes in H2A.Z at the TSS mirror a global expansion of the NDR at S and M which, unexpectedly, is unrelated to transcriptional activity. Coincident with the loss of H2A.Z at promoters, it is targeted to the centromere when mitosis begins. We surveyed whole genome expression using microarrays, in combination with H2A.Z ChIP-Seq (Illumina) data, to study the H2A.Z distribution on promoters of coding genes in different stages of the cell cycle in Trophoblast Stem (TS) cells. These data are published in Nekrasov et al., H2AZ inheritance during the cell cycle and it's impact on promoter organization and dynamics, Nature Structural and Molecular Biology (in press: accepted for publication on 24 Sep 2012). Mouse Trophoblast stem (TS) cells were grown in cell culture medium. By adding specific drugs cells were arrested at particular stages of the cell cycle: G1; S and M. Total RNA was extracted from TS cells arrested at G1; S and M stages of cell cycle using TRizol (Invitrogen) extraction protocol and purified further the by RNAeasy Extraction Kit (Qiagen). RNA quality was assesed on Bioanalyzer total RNA chip. RNA samples were reverse transcribed and resulted cDNA samples were subjected to DNA microarray analysis (in triplicate) using the GeneChip Mouse Gene 1.0 ST Array (Affymetrix). Robust Multichip Average (RMA) correction and probe set summaries were obtained using Affymetrix Power Tools software annotation (Affymetrix) based on the mm9 mouse genome. Unless otherwise stated, all subsequent expression analyses (see Supplementary Methods) were performed in the R statistical computing environment (version 2.11.1).
Project description:While it has been clearly established that well positioned H2A.Z-containing nucleosomes flank the nucleosome depleted region (NDR) at the transcriptional start site (TSS) of active mammalian genes, how this chromatin-based information is transmitted through the cell cycle is unknown. We show here that in trophoblast stem (TS) cells, the level of H2A.Z at promoters decreases during S phase coinciding with homotypic (H2A.Z/H2A.Z) nucleosomes flanking the TSS becoming heterotypic (H2A.Z/H2A). Surprisingly, these nucleosomes remain heterotypic at M phase. At the TSS, we identify an unstable heterotypic H2A.Z-containing nucleosome in G1 which, strikingly, is lost following DNA replication. These dynamic changes in H2A.Z at the TSS mirror a global expansion of the NDR at S and M which, unexpectedly, is unrelated to transcriptional activity. Coincident with the loss of H2A.Z at promoters, it is targeted to the centromere when mitosis begins We performed ChIP-Seq experiments (on mouse Trophoblast Stem cells arrested at G1; S and M stages of thecell cycle) using antibodies against histone variant H2A.Z and sequentional ChIP-re-ChIP-Seq experiments using H2A.Z antibody and H2A antibody in sequence. Combining those data sets with microarray gene expression expression data allowed us to see H2A.Z distribution over promoters of mouse coding genes in cell cycle dependant manner. Interestingly, Input also showed cell-cycle dependent effects, but histone H3 could be used as a cell-cycle independent normalisation factor. We also performed ChIP-seq with a CTCF pull-down to investigate its cell-cycle dependent relationship with heterochromatin.