Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) of nonembryonic origins possess the proliferation and multilineage differentiation potentials. It has been established that epigenetic mechanisms could be critical for determining the fate of stem cells, and MSCs derived from different origins exhibited different expression profiles individually to a certain extent. In this study, ChIP-on-chip was used to generate ge-nome-wide histone H3-Lys9 acetylation and dimethylation profiles at gene promoters in human bone marrow MSCs. We showed that modifications of histone H3-Lys9 at gene promoters correlated well with mRNA expression in human bone marrow MSCs. Functional analysis revealed that many key cellular pathways in human bone marrow MSC self-renewal, such as the canonical signaling pathways, cell cycle pathways and cytokine related pathways may be regulated by H3-Lys9 modifications. These data suggest that gene activation and silencing affected by H3-Lys9 acetylation and dimethylation, respectively, may be essential to the maintenance of human bone mar-row MSC self-renewal and multi-potency.
Jiang TanHui HuangWei HuangLin LiJianhua GuoBaiqu HuangJun Lu
In this paper, we demonstrate that in Physarum polycephalum, a naturally synchronized slime mold, histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitor Trichostatin A (TSA), arrestes the cell cycle at the checkpoints of S/G2, G2/M and mitosis exit, and influences the transcription of two ras genes Ppras1 and Pprap1, as well as the Ras protein level. Antibody neu-tralization experiment using anti-Ras antibody treatment showed that Ras protein played an important role in cell cycle checkpoint control through regulation of the level of Cyclin B1, suggesting that Ras protein might be a key factor for histone acetylation-mediated cell cycle regulation in P. polycephalum.
The human pituitary tumor transforming gene (hPTTG) serves as a marker for malignancy grading in several cancers. hPTTG is involved in multiple cellular pathways including cell transformation, apoptosis, DNA repair, genomic instability, mitotic control and angiogenesis induction. However, the molecular mechanisms underlying hPTTG regulation have not been fully explored. In this study, we found that overexpression of histone acetyltransferase (HAT) p300 upregulated hPTTG at the levels of promoter activity, mRNA and pro- tein expression. Moreover, the HAT activity of p300 was critical for its regulatory function. Chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) analysis revealed that overexpression of p300 elevated the level of histone H3 acetylation on the hPTTG promoter. Additionally, the NF-Y sites at the hPTTG promoter exhibited a synergistic effect on upregulation of hPTTG through interacting with p300. We also found that treatment of 293T cells with the histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitor Trichostatin A (TSA) increased hPTTG promoter activity. Meanwhile, we provided evidence that HDAC3 decreased hPTTG promoter activity. These data implicate an important role of the histone acetylation modification in the regulation of hPTTG.
