Poster abstracts

Poster number 26 submitted by Hui-wen Liu

Chromatin modification by SUMO-1 associates with activation of the promoters of translation machinery genes

Hui-wen Liu (Biomedical Informatics & Molecular, cellular, and developmental biology.), Jie Zhang (Biomedical Informatics), George F. Heine (Southern State Community College), Mansi Arora (Biomedical Informatics & Molecular, cellular, and developmental biology.), Hatice Gulcin Ozer (Biomedical Informatics), Kun Huang (Biomedical Informatics)

Abstract:
SUMOylation of transcription factors and chromatin proteins is in many cases a negative mark that recruits factors that repress gene expression. In this study, we determined the occupancy of SUMO-1 on chromatin in HeLa cells by use of chromatin affinity purification coupled with next generation sequencing. We found SUMO-1 localization on chromatin was dynamic throughout the cell cycle. Surprisingly, we observed that from G1 through late S phase, but not during mitosis, SUMO-1 marks the chromatin just upstream of the transcription start site on many of the most active housekeeping genes, including genes encoding translation factors and ribosomal subunit proteins. Moreover, we found that SUMO-1 distribution on promoters was correlated with H3K4me3, another general epigenetic activation marker. Depletion of SUMO-1 resulted in down regulation of the genes that were marked by SUMO-1 at their promoters during interphase, supporting the concept that the marking of promoter chromatin by SUMO-1 is associated with transcriptional activation of genes involved in ribosome biosynthesis and in the protein translation process.

References:
1. Gareau JR, Lima CD (2010) The SUMO pathway: emerging mechanisms that shape specificity, conjugation and recognition. Nature reviews Molecular cell biology 11: 861-871.
2. Gill G (2010) SUMO weighs in on polycomb-dependent gene repression. Molecular cell 38: 157-159.
3. Rosonina E, Duncan SM, Manley JL (2010) SUMO functions in constitutive transcription and during activation of inducible genes in yeast. Genes & development 24: 1242-1252.

Keywords: SUMOylation, Chromatin, Transcription