Synergistic gene expression during the acute phase response is characterized by transcription factor assisted loading

Ido Goldstein*, Ville Paakinaho, Songjoon Baek, Myong Hee Sung, Gordon L. Hager

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

62 Scopus citations

Abstract

The cytokines interleukin 1β and 6 (IL-1β, IL-6) mediate the acute phase response (APR). In liver, they regulate the secretion of acute phase proteins. Using RNA-seq in primary hepatocytes, we show that these cytokines regulate transcription in a bifurcated manner, leading to both synergistic and antagonistic gene expression. By mapping changes in enhancer landscape and transcription factor occupancy (using ChIP-seq), we show that synergistic gene induction is achieved by assisted loading of STAT3 on chromatin by NF-κB. With IL-6 treatment alone, STAT3 does not efficiently bind 20% of its coordinated binding sites. In the presence of IL-1β, NF-κB is activated, binds a subset of enhancers and primes their activity, as evidenced by increasing H3K27ac. This facilitates STAT3 binding and synergistic gene expression. Our findings reveal an enhancer-specific crosstalk whereby NF-κB enables STAT3 binding at some enhancers while perturbing it at others. This model reconciles seemingly contradictory reports of NF-κB-STAT3 crosstalk.

Original languageEnglish
Article number1849
JournalNature Communications
Volume8
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - 1 Dec 2017
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 The Author(s).

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