Affiliation:
1. Howard Hughes Medical Institute Research Laboratories Department of Embryology, Carnegie Institution for Science, Baltimore, United States
Abstract
Polycomb silencing represses gene expression and provides a molecular memory of chromatin state that is essential for animal development. We show thatDrosophilafemale germline stem cells (GSCs) provide a powerful system for studying Polycomb silencing. GSCs have a non-canonical distribution of PRC2 activity and lack silenced chromatin like embryonic progenitors. As GSC daughters differentiate into nurse cells and oocytes, nurse cells, like embryonic somatic cells, silence genes in traditional Polycomb domains and in generally inactive chromatin. Developmentally controlled expression of two Polycomb repressive complex 2 (PRC2)-interacting proteins, Pcl and Scm, initiate silencing during differentiation. In GSCs, abundant Pcl inhibits PRC2-dependent silencing globally, while in nurse cells Pcl declines and newly induced Scm concentrates PRC2 activity on traditional Polycomb domains. Our results suggest that PRC2-dependent silencing is developmentally regulated by accessory proteins that either increase the concentration of PRC2 at target sites or inhibit the rate that PRC2 samples chromatin.
Funder
Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Helen Hay Whitney Foundation
Jane Coffin Childs Memorial Fund for Medical Research
Publisher
eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd
Subject
General Immunology and Microbiology,General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology,General Medicine,General Neuroscience
Cited by
30 articles.
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