Genome-wide identification of MBD2 and MBD3 binding sites by ChIP-seq. Homo sapiens

The heterogeneous collection of NuRD complexes can be grouped into the MBD2 or MBD3 containing complexes MBD2-NuRD and MBD3-NuRD. Although functional differences have been described, a direct comparison of MBD2 and MBD3 in respect to genome-wide binding and function has been lacking. Here we show a strong enrichment for MBD2 at methylated CpG sequences, whereas CpGs bound by MBD3 are devoid of methylation. Gene activity of MBD2 bound genes is four fold lower as compared to genes bound by MBD3. When depleting cells for MBD2, the MBD2 bound genes increase their activity, whereas MBD2 plus MBD3 bound genes reduce their activity. Most strikingly, MBD3 is enriched at active promoters, whereas MBD2 is bound at methylated promoters and enriched at exon sequences of active genes. This suggests a functional connection between MBD2 binding to chromatin and splicing. Overall design: V5 ChIP followed by high throughput sequencing in HeLa cells transiently transfected with either V5-MBD2b, V5-MBD3 or V5.