‘Acidic patch’ regulates access to genetic information

Posted on by Catherine Zandonella
Histone image

By Pooja Makhijani for the Department of Chemistry

Chromatin remodelers — protein machines that pack and unpack chromatin, the tightly wound DNA-protein complex in cell nuclei — are essential and powerful regulators for critical cellular processes, such as replication, recombination and gene transcription and repression. In a new study published Aug. 2 in the journal Nature, a team led by researchers from Princeton University unravels more details on how a class of ATP-dependent chromatin remodelers, called ISWI, regulate access to genetic information.

The researchers reported that ISWI remodelers use a structural feature of the nucleosome, known as the “acidic patch,” to remodel chromatin. The nucleosome is the fundamental structural subunit of chromatin, and is often compared to thread wrapped around a spool.

Geoffrey Dann
Geoffrey Dann. Photo by C. Todd Reichart

“The acidic patch is a negatively charged surface, presented on each face of the nucleosome disc, that is formed by amino acids contributed by two different histone proteins, H2A and H2B,” said Geoffrey Dann, a graduate student in the Department of Molecular Biology at Princeton and the study’s lead author. “Histone proteins are overall very positively charged, which makes the negatively charged acidic patch region of the nucleosome very unique. Recognition of the acidic patch has never before been implicated in chromatin remodeling.”

The research was conducted in the laboratory of Tom Muir, the Van Zandt Williams Jr. Class of 1965 Professor of Chemistry and chair of the Department of Chemistry. Research in the Muir group centers on elucidating the physiochemical basis of protein functions in biomedically relevant systems.

Because ISWI remodelers are known to interact extensively with nucleosomes, the researchers hypothesized that signals, in the form of chemical modifications on histone proteins embedded within nucleosomes, communicate to the remodelers on which nucleosome to act. Using high throughput screening technology, an assay process often used in drug discovery, allowed the researchers to quickly conduct tens of thousands of biochemical measurements to test their assumptions. “The number of chromatin modifications known to exist in vivo is astronomical,” Dann said.

Not only did the experiments reveal that ISWI remodelers use the “acidic patch” to remodel chromatin, but also determined that remodeling enzymes outside the family of ISWI remodelers also use this structural feature, “suggesting that this feature may be a general requirement for chromatin remodeling to occur,” Dann said.

Certain chemical modifications that act on histone proteins that are adjacent to the acidic patch also have the ability to enhance or inhibit ISWI remodeling activity, he explained. “A handful of other proteins are known to engage the acidic patch in their interaction with chromatin as well, and we also found that the biochemistry of several of these proteins was affected by such modifications. Interestingly, each protein tested had its own signature response to this collection of modifications.”

The high throughput screening technology method also generated a vast library of data to drive the design of future studies geared toward further understanding ISWI regulation. “This study generated an immense amount of data pointing to many other novel regulatory inputs, in the form of chromatin modifications, into ISWI remodeling activity,” Dann said. “A long-term goal in our lab is to use this data resource as a launch pad for additional studies investigating how chromatin modifications affect ISWI remodeling, and how this plays into the various roles ISWI remodelers assume in the cell.”

histone diagram
Diagram depicting all histone modifications, mutants, and variants present in the 115-member nucleosome library used in this study. Residues modified or mutated were mapped on to the nucleosome in black. H2A (light yellow), H2B (light red), H3 (light blue), and H4 (light green) modification and mutation locations are indicated by boxes and lines. For clarity, connections are only shown to a single copy of each histone protein.

Their findings may also identify a new instrument in cells’ molecular repertoire of chromatin-remodeling tools and spur investigations into potential cancer therapeutic targets. “Mutations in the acidic patch are known to occur in certain types of human cancers, which underscores the emerging importance of the acidic patch in chromatin biology,” Dann said.

The study, “ISWI chromatin remodellers sense nucleosome modifications to determine substrate preference,” was published Aug. 2 by Nature. doi:10.1038/nature23671

The authors at Princeton University were Geoffrey P. Dann, Glen Liszczak, John D. Bagert, Manuel M. Müller, Uyen T. T. Nguyen, Felix Wojcik, Zachary Z. Brown, Jeffrey Bos, Rasmus Pihl, Samuel B. Pollock, Katharine L. Diehl and Tom W. Muir. Also contributing to the study were Tatyana Panchenko & C. David Allis at The Rockefeller University.

The research was funded in part by the German Research Foundation and the National Institutes of Health (GM112365, R01 GM107047).

Read the full article here: https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaap/ncurrent/full/nature23671.html

 

Study reveals mechanism behind enzyme that tags unneeded DNA (Nature Chem. Bio.)

Posted on by Catherine Zandonella
Designer chromatin experiments
Graphical representation of designer chromatin experiments. Image courtesy of the Muir lab.

By Tien Nguyen, Department of Chemistry

Researchers have discovered the two-step process that activates an essential human enzyme, called Suv39h1, which is responsible for organizing large portions of the DNA found in every living cell.

For any particular cell, such as a skin or brain cell, much of this genetic information is extraneous and must be packed away to allow sufficient space and resources for more important genes. Failure to properly pack DNA jeopardizes the stability of chromosomes and can result in severe diseases. Suv39h1 is one of the main enzymes that chemically mark the irrelevant regions of DNA to be compacted by cellular machinery, but little is known about how it installs its tag.

Now, scientists at Princeton have used ‘designer chromatin’ templates – highly customized replicas of cellular DNA and histone proteins, the scaffolding proteins around which DNA is wrapped – to reveal new details about Suv39h1’s mechanism. The researchers investigated how Suv39h1 employs a positive feedback loop to chemically tag thousands of adjacent histones, thus signaling the cell to stow away these underlying, unnecessary DNA sequences. The work was published in in the journal Nature Chemical Biology.

“One of the things that has always fascinated me about feedback loops is that they’re super dangerous. If you make a mistake once, you end up getting reinforcement through the feedback loop,” said Manuel Müller, a postdoctoral researcher in the Muir lab and lead author on the study. “So how does Suv39h1 keep itself in check?”

Suv39h1 had been known to possess two distinct parts, but the new research revealed how they work together in order to ‘switch on’ the enzyme. One part of the enzyme, known as the chromodomain, is constantly exposed and seeks out specific chemical tags, known as a methyl groups, located at predetermined sites on histones. When the chromodomain finds these groups in the genome, it locks onto the spot and allows the other part, the enzymatic core, to install more methyl tags at adjacent histones.

“The second, anchoring step wasn’t really known before. It provides an extra level of control and allows the process to be extremely fine-tuned,” Müller said. A similar mechanism may be employed by many other enzymes operating on chromatin, given that they contain similar components of a feedback loop.

To understand how the enzyme carries out this process, the researchers synthesized complex chromatin templates that were three times larger than previously reported models. They divided the template into three blocks that could each be manipulated in various ways. For example, a block could be prepared with the chemical tag present, absent or mutated such that tagging can’t occur. “The different blocks should signal to the enzyme either start here or feel free to spread here or absolutely stop here,” said Glen Liszczak, a co-author and postdoctoral researcher in the Muir lab.

By rearranging the various domains, the research team observed where the enzyme spread its mark across the genome. They found that Suv39h1 preferred to spread across small distances, but that it could reach sequences further along if chromatin folding decreased the physical distance in space.

“We’ve learned something new about this enzyme, something that we couldn’t have without the pinpoint precision that the designer chromatin offers,” Liszczak said. “There are a lot of questions that our lab has been interested in that we can now start to answer.”

The research was funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (postdoctoral fellowships) and the US National Institutes of Health (R01-GM107047).

Read the abstract or full article.

Müller, M. M.; Fierz, B.; Bittova, L.; Liszczak, G.; Muir, T. W. “A two-state activation mechanism controls the histone methyltransferase Suv39h1.” Nature Chem. Bio. Available online January 25, 2016.