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Flipping between Polycomb repressed and active transcriptional states introduces noise in gene expression.

Published version
Peer-reviewed

Type

Article

Change log

Authors

Kar, Gozde 
Kim, Jong Kyoung 
Kolodziejczyk, Aleksandra A 
Natarajan, Kedar Nath 
Torlai Triglia, Elena  ORCID logo  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6059-0116

Abstract

Polycomb repressive complexes (PRCs) are important histone modifiers, which silence gene expression; yet, there exists a subset of PRC-bound genes actively transcribed by RNA polymerase II (RNAPII). It is likely that the role of Polycomb repressive complex is to dampen expression of these PRC-active genes. However, it is unclear how this flipping between chromatin states alters the kinetics of transcription. Here, we integrate histone modifications and RNAPII states derived from bulk ChIP-seq data with single-cell RNA-sequencing data. We find that Polycomb repressive complex-active genes have greater cell-to-cell variation in expression than active genes, and these results are validated by knockout experiments. We also show that PRC-active genes are clustered on chromosomes in both two and three dimensions, and interactions with active enhancers promote a stabilization of gene expression noise. These findings provide new insights into how chromatin regulation modulates stochastic gene expression and transcriptional bursting, with implications for regulation of pluripotency and development.Polycomb repressive complexes modify histones but it is unclear how changes in chromatin states alter kinetics of transcription. Here, the authors use single-cell RNAseq and ChIPseq to find that actively transcribed genes with Polycomb marks have greater cell-to-cell variation in expression.

Description

Keywords

Animals, Base Sequence, Cell Line, Tumor, Gene Expression Regulation, Genetic Markers, Mice, Mice, Knockout, Polycomb Repressive Complex 1, Polycomb-Group Proteins, RNA, Messenger, Transcription, Genetic, Ubiquitin-Protein Ligases

Journal Title

Nat Commun

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

2041-1723
2041-1723

Volume Title

8

Publisher

Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Sponsorship
Medical Research Council (MR/L016311/1)
Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBS/E/B/000C0405)
Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBS/E/B/000C0404)