Premium
Groucho‐mediated long‐range transcriptional repression: roles for discontinuous spreading and an HDAC‐dependent increase in nucleosome density
Author(s) -
Courey Albert J,
Winkler Clint J.,
Ponce Alberto,
White Kevin,
Negre Nicolas
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
the faseb journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.709
H-Index - 277
eISSN - 1530-6860
pISSN - 0892-6638
DOI - 10.1096/fasebj.24.1_supplement.713.1
Subject(s) - psychological repression , corepressor , nucleosome , histone , histone deacetylase , repressor , biology , microbiology and biotechnology , genetics , gene , gene expression
The Drosophila Groucho (Gro) protein is the founding member of a family of metazoan transcriptional corepressors with diverse roles in development. Gro directs long‐range repression, which contrasts with the short‐range repression directed by the corepressor CtBP. However, the mechanistic difference between these two types of repression is not clear. To determine the structure of domains of Gro‐mediated repression, we examined the genome‐wide distribution of Gro‐binding sites in early embryos and wing discs by ChIP‐chip. Our findings suggest that communication between the sites to which repressors recruit Gro and promoters may involve a combination of linear Gro spreading and DNA looping. This, in turn, leads to an increase in nucleosome density. The increase in nucleosome density appears to require histone deacetylase activity, as the wing discs of flies raised in media containing HDAC inhibitors show dramatically increased levels of histone H3 and histone H4 acetylation coincident with reduced repression and decreased histone density at Gro target genes.