Crucial Roles for Interactions between MLL3/4 and INI1 in Nuclear Receptor Transactivation

Nuclear receptor (NR) transactivation involves multiple coactivators, and the molecular basis for how these are functionally integrated needs to be determined to fully understand the NR action. Activating signal cointegrator-2 (ASC-2), a transcriptional coactivator of many NRs and transcription factors, forms a steady-state complex, ASCOM (for ASC-2 complex), which contains histone H3-lysine-4 (H3K4) methyltransferase MLL3 or its paralog MLL4. Here, we show that ASCOM requires a functional cross talk with the ATPase-dependent chromatin remodeling complex Swi/Snf for efficient NR transactivation. Our results reveal that ASCOM and Swi/Snf are tightly colocalized in the nucleus and that ASCOM and Swi/Snf promote each other’s binding to NR target genes. We further show that the C-terminal SET domain of MLL3 and MLL4 directly interacts with INI1, an integral subunit of Swi/Snf. Our mutational analysis demonstrates that this interaction underlies the mutual facilitation of ASCOM and Swi/Snf recruitment to NR target genes. Importantly, this study uncovers a specific protein-protein interaction as a novel venue to couple two distinct enzymatic coactivator complexes during NR transactivation.