EED orchestration of heart maturation through interaction with HDACs is H3K27me3-independent
- Peking University, China
- Boston Children's Hospital, United States
- Our Lady's Children's Hospital Crumlin, Ireland
- Peking Union Medical College, China
Abstract
In proliferating cells, where most Polycomb repressive complex 2 (PRC2) studies have been performed, gene repression is associated with PRC2 trimethylation of H3K27 (H3K27me3). However, it is uncertain whether PCR2 writing of H3K27me3 is mechanistically required for gene silencing. Here we studied PRC2 function in postnatal mouse cardiomyocytes, where the paucity of cell division obviates bulk H3K27me3 rewriting after each cell cycle. EED (Embryonic Ectoderm Development) inactivation in the postnatal heart (EedCKO) caused lethal dilated cardiomyopathy. Surprisingly, gene upregulation in EedCKO was not coupled with loss of H3K27me3. Rather, the activating histone mark H3K27ac increased. EED interacted with histone deacetylases (HDACs) and enhanced their catalytic activity. HDAC overexpression normalized EedCKO heart function and expression of derepressed genes. Our results uncovered a non-canonical, H3K27me3-independent EED repressive mechanism that is essential for normal heart function. Our results further illustrate that organ dysfunction due to epigenetic dysregulation can be corrected by epigenetic rewiring.
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Funding
National Natural Science Foundation of China (31571487)
- Aibin He
National Institutes of Health (U01HL098166)
- William T Pu
National Institutes of Health (HL095712)
- William T Pu
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Ethics
Animal experimentation: All animal experiments were performed according to protocols (protocol number: Lsc-HeAB-1) approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committees of Peking University
Copyright
© 2017, Ai et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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EED orchestration of heart maturation through interaction with HDACs is H3K27me3-independent
eLife 6:e24570.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.24570
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