Alpha-satellite RNA transcripts are repressed by centromere-nucleolus associations
- Whitehead Institute, United States
- University of California, Santa Cruz, United States
Abstract
Although originally thought to be silent chromosomal regions, centromeres are instead actively transcribed. However, the behavior and contributions of centromere-derived RNAs have remained unclear. Here, we used single-molecule fluorescence in-situ hybridization (smFISH) to detect alpha-satellite RNA transcripts in intact human cells. We find that alpha-satellite RNA smFISH foci levels vary across cell lines and over the cell cycle, but do not remain associated with centromeres, displaying localization consistent with other long non-coding RNAs. Alpha-satellite expression occurs through RNA Polymerase II-dependent transcription, but does not require established centromere or cell division components. Instead, our work implicates centromere-nucleolar interactions as repressing alpha-satellite expression. The fraction of nucleolar-localized centromeres inversely correlates with alpha-satellite transcripts levels across cell lines and transcript levels increase substantially when the nucleolus is disrupted. The control of alpha-satellite transcripts by centromere-nucleolar contacts provides a mechanism to modulate centromere transcription and chromatin dynamics across diverse cell states and conditions.
Data availability
All data generated or analyzed during this study are included in the manuscript and supporting files.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
National Institute of General Medical Sciences (R35GM126930)
- Iain M Cheeseman
American Cancer Society
- Leah Bury
G. Harold and Leila Y. Mathers Foundation
- Iain M Cheeseman
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Copyright
© 2020, Bury 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.
Metrics
-
- 5,229
- views
-
- 626
- downloads
-
- 67
- citations
Views, downloads and citations are aggregated across all versions of this paper published by eLife.
Citations by DOI
-
- 67
- citations for umbrella DOI https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.59770
Download links
A two-part list of links to download the article, or parts of the article, in various formats.
Downloads (link to download the article as PDF)
Open citations (links to open the citations from this article in various online reference manager services)
Cite this article (links to download the citations from this article in formats compatible with various reference manager tools)
Alpha-satellite RNA transcripts are repressed by centromere-nucleolus associations
eLife 9:e59770.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.59770
