RNA-dependent chromatin targeting of TET2 for endogenous retrovirus control in pluripotent stem cells [CLIP-Seq]

Ten-eleven translocation (TET) proteins play key roles in regulating the methylation status of DNA through oxidizing methylcytosines (5mC), generating 5-hydroxymethylcytosines (5hmC) that can both serve as stable epigenetic marks and participate in active demethylation. Here we show that TET2 is recruited by the RNA-binding protein Paraspeckle component 1 (PSPC1) through transcriptionally active loci, including endogenous retroviruses (ERVs) whose long terminal repeats (LTRs) have been co-opted by mammalian genomes as stage- and tissue-specific transcriptional regulatory modules. We find that PSPC1 and TET2 contribute to ERV and ERV-associated gene regulation by both transcriptional repression via histone deacetylases and post-transcriptional destabilization of ERV RNAs through 5hmC modification. Our findings provide evidence for a functional role of transcriptionally active ERVs as specific docking sites for RNA epigenetic modulation and gene regulation. RNA occupancy profiling of Pspc1 was performed in mouse ESCs by crosslinking immunoprecipitation and massive parallel sequencing (CLIP-seq).