Global binding profiles of MYBL2 and FOXM1 in lung adenocarcinoma reveal that MYBL2 regulates FOXM1 to control cell-cycle genes including CENPA [ChIP-seq]

MYBL2 is a transcription factor that has either pro-survival or anti-survival functions in a cell-type specific manner. Overexpression of MYBL2 is associated with worse survival of lung adenocarcinoma, but the mechanism by which it regulates transcription has not yet been elucidated. In this study, we found that MYBL2 mainly binds to the promoters of highly expressed genes in lung adenocarcinoma cells using ChIP-seq. Using knock-down and RNA-seq approach, we identified over a thousand of genes deregulated by MYBL2. By integrating ChIP-seq and RNA-seq data, we identified target genes of MYBL2. We revealed that FOXM1 is regulated by MYBL2 in lung adenocarcinoma cells, and FOXM1 binding sites are largely shared with MYBL2 binding sites. We treated lung adenocarcinoma cells with FDI-6, a known FOXM1 inhibitor and investigated the effect of FDI-6 in transcriptional regulation of MYBL2 and FOXM1. We found that CENPA is one of the key genes regulated by MYBL2 and FOXM1, and that it can be inhibited by FDI-6. Our signaling pathway analysis results revealed that MYBL2 and FOXM1 activate cell-cycle genes, suggesting that MYBL2 and FOXM1 act as oncogenic transcription factors in lung adenocarcinoma cells and FDI-6 could be a potential treatment of the disease. Overall design: Chromatin immunoprecipitation sequencing (ChIP-seq) of MYBL2 and FOXM1 in A549 lung cancer cells