A β-catenin-driven switch in TCF/LEF transcription factor binding to DNA target sites promotes commitment of mammalian nephron progenitor cells
- University of California, Los Angeles, United States
- 10x Genomics, United States
- University of California, San Diego, United States
- Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California, United States
- Maine Medical Center Research Institute, United States
- The Rogosin Institute, United States
Abstract
The canonical Wnt pathway transcriptional co-activator β-catenin regulates self-renewal and differentiation of mammalian nephron progenitor cells (NPCs). We modulated β-catenin levels in NPC cultures using the GSK3 inhibitor CHIR9902 (CHIR) to examine opposing developmental actions of β-catenin. Low CHIR-mediated maintenance and expansion of NPCs is independent of direct engagement of TCF/LEF/β-catenin transcriptional complexes at low CHIR-dependent cell-cycle targets. In contrast, in high CHIR, TCF7/LEF1/β-catenin complexes replaced TCF7L1/TCF7L2 binding on enhancers of differentiation-promoting target genes. Chromosome confirmation studies showed pre-established promoter-enhancer connections to these target genes in NPCs. High CHIR-associated de novo looping was observed in positive transcriptional feedback regulation to the canonical Wnt pathway. Thus, β-catenin's direct transcriptional role is restricted to the induction of NPCs where rising β-catenin levels switch inhibitory TCF7L1/TCF7L2 complexes to activating LEF1/TCF7 complexes at primed gene targets poised for rapid initiation of a nephrogenic program.
Data availability
All RNA-Seq, ATAC-Seq, ChIP-Seq and HiC data sets are accessible through GEO (GSE131119).
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (R01 DK054364 Cell Interaction in Development of the Mammalian Kidney)
- Andrew P McMahon
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Reviewing Editor
- Edward E Morrisey, University of Pennsylvania, United States
Ethics
Animal experimentation: This study was performed in strict accordance with the recommendations in the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals of the National Institutes of Health. All of the animals were handled according to approved institutional animal care and use committee (IACUC) protocols (#11893) of the University of Southern California. The protocol was approved by the Committee on the Ethics of Animal Experiments of the University of Southern California. Every effort was made to minimize suffering.
Version history
- Received: October 29, 2020
- Accepted: February 14, 2021
- Accepted Manuscript published: February 15, 2021 (version 1)
- Version of Record published: March 1, 2021 (version 2)
- Version of Record updated: April 29, 2021 (version 3)
Copyright
© 2021, Guo 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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A β-catenin-driven switch in TCF/LEF transcription factor binding to DNA target sites promotes commitment of mammalian nephron progenitor cells
eLife 10:e64444.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.64444
Further reading
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- Computational and Systems Biology
- Developmental Biology
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