MAF1, a repressor of RNA polymerase III-dependent transcription, regulates bone mass
- Baylor College of Medicine, United States
- Ican School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, United States
- Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, United States
- Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, United States
- Maine Medical Center Research Institute, United States
- Albert Einstein College of Medicine, United States
Abstract
MAF1, a key repressor of RNA polymerase III-mediated transcription, has been shown to promote mesoderm formation in vitro. Here, we show that MAF1 plays a critical role in the regulation of osteoblast differentiation and bone mass. A high bone mass phenotype was noted in mice with a global deletion of Maf1 (Maf1-/- mice). However, osteoblasts isolated from Maf1-/- mice showed reduced osteoblastogenesis ex vivo. Therefore, we determined the effect of MAF1 overexpression specifically in cells from the mesenchymal lineage (Prx1-Cre;LSL-MAF1 mice). These mice showed increased bone mass. Ex vivo, cells from Prx1-Cre;LSL-MAF1 mice showed enhanced osteoblastogenesis concordant with their high bone mass phenotype. Thus, the high bone mass phenotype in Maf1-/- mice is likely due to the confounding effects of the global absence of Maf1 in Maf1-/- mice. MAF1 overexpression promoted osteoblast differentiation and shRNA-mediated Maf1 downregulation inhibited differentiation of ST2 cells, overall indicating MAF1 enhances osteoblast formation. We also found that, in contrast to MAF1 overexpression, other perturbations that repress RNA pol III transcription, including Brf1 knockdown and chemical inhibition of RNA pol III by ML-60218, inhibited osteoblast differentiation. All perturbations that decrease RNA pol III transcription, however, enhanced adipogenesis in ST2 cell cultures. RNA-seq was used to determine the basis for these opposing actions on osteoblast differentiation. The modalities used to perturb RNA pol III transcription resulted in distinct gene expression changes, indicating that this transcription process is highly sensitive and triggers diverse gene expression programs and phenotypic outcomes. Specifically, MAF1 induced genes in ST2 cells known to promote osteoblast differentiation. Furthermore, genes that are induced during osteoblast differentiation displayed codon bias. Together, these results reveal a novel role for MAF1 and RNA pol III-mediated transcription in osteoblast fate determination and differentiation and bone mass regulation.
Data availability
Raw and processed data from the RNA sequencing experiment determining gene expression before and during osteoblast differentiation has been uploaded to the GEO data base with accession nr. GSE203308.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
National Cancer Institute (CA108614)
- Tony Yuen
- Clifford J Rosen
- Ian M Willis
- Mone Zaidi
National Cancer Institute (CA74138)
- Li Sun
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
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 mice were handled according to approved institutional animal care and use committee (IACUC) protocol AN-6370 ofBaylor College of Medicine.
Reviewing Editor
- Subburaman Mohan, Jerry L. Pettis Memorial VA Medical Center, United States
Version history
- Received: October 15, 2021
- Preprint posted: November 11, 2021 (view preprint)
- Accepted: April 26, 2022
- Accepted Manuscript published: May 25, 2022 (version 1)
- Version of Record published: June 21, 2022 (version 2)
Copyright
This is an open-access article, free of all copyright, and may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, modified, built upon, or otherwise used by anyone for any lawful purpose. The work is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication.
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MAF1, a repressor of RNA polymerase III-dependent transcription, regulates bone mass
eLife 11:e74740.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.74740
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