GATA6-AS1 Regulates GATA6 Expression to Modulate Human Endoderm Differentiation

Transcriptome analysis has uncovered a series of long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) transcribed during cell differentiation. Here, we uncovered lncRNA GATA6-AS1 is a functional lncRNA in definitive endoderm (DE) differentiation. We found GATA6-AS1 positively regulated the expression of endoderm key factor GATA6, which was different from previous reports in other biological contexts. Further investigation showed GATA6-AS1 interacted with SMAD2/3 and recruited SMAD2/3 to the promoter region of the GATA6 gene locus. In addition, overexpression of GATA6 was able to rescue the defect of DE differentiation due to the absence of GATA6-AS1, suggesting GATA6 was the functional target of GATA6-AS1 during endoderm differentiation. Ultimately, our study uncovers GATA6-AS1 is necessary for DE and pancreas differentiation, and reveals the detailed regulation mechanism between GATA6-AS1 and DE differentiation. We performed RNA-seq using ES-derived definitive endoderm cells and GATA6-AS1 knockdown definitive endoderm cells (three replicates for each).