This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial. ; Cdc14 is an essential phosphatase in yeast but its role in the mammalian cell cycle remains obscure. We report here that Cdc14b-knockout cells display unscheduled induction of multiple cell cycle regulators resulting in early entry into DNA replication and mitosis from quiescence. Cdc14b dephosphorylates Ser5 at the C-terminal domain (CTD) of RNA polymerase II, a major substrate of cyclin-dependent kinases. Lack of Cdc14b results in increased CTD-Ser5 phosphorylation, epigenetic modifications that mark active chromatin, and transcriptional induction of cell cycle regulators. These data suggest a function for mammalian Cdc14 phosphatases in the control of transcription during the cell cycle. ; This work was funded by grants from the Association for International Cancer Research (AICR #08-0188), Foundation Ramón Areces, and the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (MICINN; BFU2008-04293 to M.S.; SAF2009-07973 to M.M.). The Cell Division and Cancer Group of the CNIO is supported by the OncoCycle Programme (S-BIO-0283-2006) from the Comunidad de Madrid, the OncoBIO Consolider-Ingenio 2010 Programme (CSD2007- 00017) from the MICINN, Madrid, and the European Union Seventh Framework Programme (MitoSys project; HEALTH-F5-2010-241548). ; Peer Reviewed
Telomeric RNAs (TERRAs) are UUAGGG repeat-containing RNAs that are transcribed from the subtelomere towards the telomere. The precise genomic origin of TERRA has remained elusive. Using a whole-genome RNA-sequencing approach, we identify novel mouse transcripts arising mainly from the subtelomere of chromosome 18, and to a lesser extend chromosome 9, that resemble TERRA in several key aspects. Those transcripts contain UUAGGG-repeats and are heterogeneous in size, fluctuate in abundance in a TERRA-like manner during the cell cycle, are bound by TERRA RNA-binding proteins and are regulated in a manner similar to TERRA in response to stress and the induction of pluripotency. These transcripts are also found to associate with nearly all chromosome ends and downregulation of the transcripts that originate from chromosome 18 causes a reduction in TERRA abundance. Interestingly, downregulation of either chromosome 18 transcripts or TERRA results in increased number of telomere dysfunction-induced foci, suggesting a protective role at telomeres. ; We are indebted to Stefan Schoeftner and Susana Llanos for reagents and to Manuel Serrano, Maria Elisa Varela and Antonio Maraver for very helpful suggestions and discussion on the manuscript. We thank Diego Megias for confocal image acquisition and to Miguel Angel Grillo, Maria del Carmen Carralero and Juan Cruz Cigudosa for the Spectral Karyotyping (SKY). We thank Luis E. Donate for manuscript preparation. External RNAseq data were generated and analysed by the UW ENCODE group and by the transcriptome group at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories and the Center for Genomic Regulation (CRG in Barcelona), who are participants in the ENCODE Transcriptome Group. ChIP data of transcription factors binding site were generated and analysed by the laboratories of Michael Snyder at Stanford University and Sherman Weissman at Yale University within the ENCODE Project. Histone marks data belong to the Caltech/ENCODE project in which cell growth, ChIP and Illumina library construction were done in the laboratory of Barbara Wold (California Institute of Technology). Sequencing was done at the Millard and Muriel Jacobs Genetics and Genomics Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology, initial HiSeq data were generated at Illumina Inc., Hawyard, CA. Cell growth and ChIP of histone marks were carried out by Georgi Marinov, Katherine Fisher, Gordon Kwan, Antony Kirilusha, Ali Mortazavi, Gilberto DeSalvo and Brian Williams. Library Construction, Sequencing and Primary Data Handling by Lorianne Schaeffer, Diane Trout, Igor Antoschechkin (California Institute of Technology), Lu Zhang and Gary Schroth (Illumina Inc.). Data processing and submission by Georgi Marinov and Diane Trout. Research in the Blasco laboratory is funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness Projects SAF2008-05384 and CSD2007-00017, the Madrid Regional Government Project S2010/BMD-2303 (ReCaRe), the European Union FP7 Project FHEALTH-2010-259749 (EuroBATS), the European Research Council (ERC) Project GA#232854 (TEL STEM CELL), the Preclinical Research Award from Fundacion Lilly (Spain), Fundacion Botin (Spain) and AXA Research Fund. ; Sí
Histone H4 acetylation at Lysine 16 (H4K16ac) is a key epigenetic mark involved in gene regulation, DNA repair and chromatin remodeling, and though it is known to be essential for embryonic development, its role during adult life is still poorly understood. Here we show that this lysine is massively hyperacetylated in peripheral neutrophils. Genome-wide mapping of H4K16ac in terminally differentiated blood cells, along with functional experiments, supported a role for this histone post-translational modification in the regulation of cell differentiation and apoptosis in the hematopoietic system. Furthermore, in neutrophils, H4K16ac was enriched at specific DNA repeats. These DNA regions presented an accessible chromatin conformation and were associated with the cleavage sites that generate the 50 kb DNA fragments during the first stages of programmed cell death. Our results thus suggest that H4K16ac plays a dual role in myeloid cells as it not only regulates differentiation and apoptosis, but it also exhibits a non-canonical structural role in poising chromatin for cleavage at an early stage of neutrophil cell death. ; Plan Nacional de I+D+I co-funding FEDER [PI15/00892 and PI18/01527 to M.F.F. and A.F.F.; PI16/01318 and PI14/01244 to C.L.]; ISCIII-Subdireccion General de Evaluacion y Fomento de la Investigacion, and Plan Nacional de I+D+I 2008–2011/FEDER [CP11/00131 to A.F.F.]; IUOPA (to G.F.B. and M.I.S.); Fundacion Cientifica de la AECC (to R.G.U.); Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness Juan de la Cierva postdoctoral fellowships [FJCI-2015-26965 to J.R.T., IJCI-2015- 23316 to V.L.]; Fundacion Ramon Areces (to M.F.F); FICYT (to E.G.T., M.G.G., A.C.); Asturias Regional Government [GRUPIN14-052 to M.F.F.]; Gobierno del Principado de Asturias, PCTI-Plan de Ciencia, Tecnologia e Innovacion co-funding Fondos FEDER (grant number IDI/2018/146 to M.F.F. and IDI/2018/144 to C.L.); Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) [SFB960 to A.V.G., R.D.]; European Research Council [CoG-2014-646903]; Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness [SAF-SAF2013-43065 to P.M.]; Asociacion Española Contra el Cancer [AECC-CI-2015]; FERO Foundation, and the ISCIII [PI14-01191 to C.B.]; P.M. acknowledges financial support from The Obra Social La Caixa Fundacio Josep Carreras and The Generalitat de Catalunya (SGR330). P.M. an investigator from the Spanish Cell Therapy cooperative network (TERCEL). The IUOPA is supported by the Obra Social Liberbank-Cajastur, Spain. Funding for open access charge: Plan Nacional de I+D+I co-funding FEDER [PI18/01527].